Cancer patients in Saudi Arabia are now entitled to a 50% discounts on domestic air and land travel in the kingdom, according to this, which is the same discount that seniors and people with disabilities are entitled to. I've never heard of this before ... is this common practice in North America? Regardless of whether it is or not, it got me thinking.

Some discounts on the exorbitant parking rates at the hospital when my dad was ill would have been appreciated. Joking aside, I sympathize with cancer patients and think they deserve any break they can get but on the other hand, cancer isn't by definition a disability--it's a disease and if we're offering discounts on a disease, why stop with cancer? What about people with HIV, Chrohn's or Diabetes?

What do you think?

International pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca is donating $10 million to the American Cancer Society (ACS). The donation is one of the largest gifts ever received by the ACS and will help provide support for patients in United States hospitals.

Support will come in the form of specially-trained ACS employees who will work in 60 different hospitals and cancer centers and will offer social, emotional, financial, and transportation assistance in medically underserved Atlanta areas.

London-based AstraZeneca, maker of breast cancer drug tamoxifen and other breast and prostate cancer drugs, made $26 billion in sales last year, the same year the company gave $7 million to a Boston Cancer Society for the development of a Hope Lodge.

The Child Cancer Foundation -- a non-profit charity in New Zealand providing practical and emotional assistance for children with cancer, their families, and their health care providers -- operates solely from the support of its 22 branches scattered across the country. The foundation receives no funding from government agencies or other cancer support groups. So any bit of support they receive is a big deal.

Lately, the Child Cancer Foundation is making a big deal about Hyundai, the fast-growing vehicle brand supplying a range of SUVs and cars to the foundation. Five Hyundai Tucson SUVs and three Hyundai Getz will be donated, and the head of the Foundation will drive a Hyundai Sonata V6 sedan.

The Child Cancer Foundation provides support in the form of financial assistance, meals, transportation, accommodation, support groups, education scholarships, and access to holiday homes. It also contributes financially to research initiatives. The donated vehicles will help tremendously in the delivery of this support.

Mammograms are offered at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in the Texas Medical Center. They are also offered on M.D. Anderson's self-contained 38-foot van containing a LoRad MIV mammography unit. The van travels to various workplace sites where employees and clients can jump on board the van for a mobile mammogram.

Hartford Hospital's Take the Time mammogram van travels to clinics, churches, senior centers, and other Connecticut locations where women can easily access life-saving screenings. The University Breast Health Center in Augusta, Georgia is home to a mobile mammography program that reaches underserved women unable to report for on-site visits. Lexington Medical Center in South Carolina offers mobile mammograms. Y-ME National Breast Cancer Organization affiliates offer their own traveling screening services. And a mobile mammogram service was offered on Kent State University's campus during this October's Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Mammograms on the go are no different than mammograms at fixed locations. They are high quality, safe, confidential -- and typically speedier than the traditional screening procedure. Often, a woman knows before she departs that her image is technically accurate. She can ask questions and receive information, and she can expect a prompt call from the radiologist or her physician who will discuss results. Sometimes, mobile mammograms take as little as 20 minutes to complete.

Mammograms are recommended for women age 40 and older and for women with a personal or family history of breast cancer. As with all medical services, there are barriers -- such as awareness, cost, transportation, convenience -- that prevent access for some people. Mobile mammograms help drive away barriers. They allow more women more access to the best tool for identifying breast cancer in its earliest form.

Roll on, mammogram vans!

The breast cancer chemotherapy drug Adriamycin is often called The Red Devil. It's red in color and devilish in it's attack on both cancer cells and healthy cells. After her own personal attack by this drug, Katherine Russell Rich wrote a book, and she called it The Red Devil: To Hell with Cancer -- and Back. It's her account of how she got sick at the age of 32 with a relentless form of breast cancer. Although she was given just a short period of time to survive, Rich conquered cancer. And years later, she is alive and well. And she has discovered -- by mere coincidence -- that her book years ago inspired a group of women in Baltimore who are helping breast cancer patients through kind deeds. They foot the bill for transportation costs, housecleaning, and massage. They pick up and deliver medications. They gather and hug and eat. They take strolls. They call themselves The Red Devils.

Rich only found out about The Red Devils support group when a friend noticed a mention of the group in a newspaper. She informed Rich who visited the group's website. What she found took her breath away.

It seems a woman named Lark Schulze had at one time been desperate to learn about young women with stage IV breast cancer -- the same stage her 30-year-old daughter faced -- and she could not find any helpful resources. Until she came across Rich's book and poured herself into one woman's story. Moved by Rich's words, she tried to locate her, with no luck. So she took what she gathered from the book and after losing her daughter 19 months after diagnosis, became a founding member of a powerful support group -- The Red Devils -- in late 2002.

Despite failed attempts at finding Rich, Schulze says Rich changed her life. And now that the women have connected, Rich says Schulze has changed her life. At first Rich was afraid to be drawn into Schulze's world. But with a hunger to understand breast cancer from a mother's perspective, Rich took the plunge. She talked to Schulze, visited her, strolled with her, and soon the hard lump she'd carried in her stomach for so long began to soften as she connected in a deep and bizarre way with a woman she had inspired -- a woman she had never before known.

What is hanging so toxic in the air? According to the latest data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, benzene from cars and trucks that burn gasoline or diesel fuel. Other toxins causing higher risks for cancer where air pollution is the worst are naphthalene and acetaldehyde -- also from vehicles.

Autoblog, one of our sister blogs, has launched AutoblogGreen, which will feature posts on living an eco-friendly lifestyle in all things auto-related in green car culture. They will be keeping a close ear to the ground and fingers to the keyboard to give readers an up-to-the-minute accounting on the auto industry's efforts to create transportation that is fuel-efficient and cleaner for the environment.

From our perspective here at The Cancer Blog, transportation going green means a giant step towards a cancer prevention environment. From air pollution to alternative fuels, check AutoblogGreen out! It's a very cool, forward-thinking blog.

That's what I am calling AOL's list of top ten green cities -- the top ten cancer prevention cities -- because when it comes to reducing environmental cancer risks and promoting a healthy lifestyle, a city that is known as a green city is also a cancer prevention city. AOL's criteria in choosing the top ten green cities they believe are creating a healthy and livable place for its residents are: clean air and clean water, renewable energy, reliable city buses, trams, streetcars and subways, a growing number of parks and greenbelts, and farmer’s markets.

Not to claim bragging rights, but my hometown of Portland, Oregon is on the list. Austin, Texas; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Boulder, Colorado; Burlington, Vermont; Madison, Wisconsin; San Francisco, California; Santa Monica, California; Chicago, Illinois and New York, New York made the list. New York City? Yes. According to AOL's reviewers, Central Park goes a long way in making New York City a green city. As does the fact that 80 percent of the residents use public transportation. New Yorkers use fossil fuels at the rate the U.S. did in the 1920s. To learn all the ways these cities made the green list, go read AOL's Top 10 Greenest Cities. Or as I like to think of it -- the top ten cities promoting a healthy lifestyle and maintaining clean livable areas resulting in the creation of a cancer prevention environment -- the top ten cancer prevention cities.