Jones Beach Lifeguard Corps member Rick Shalvoy rowing in the Atlantic Ocean
during the 2005 Row for a Cure [Background: Robert Moses State Park]
Rick Shalvoy and Row for a Cure Foundation volunteers gratefully acknowledge Billy Joel for directing Maritime
Music and Joel Songs administrative personnel to authorize the use of his song,
The Downeaster "Alexa" © 1989 Joel Songs.
During the summer of 1997, Rick Shalvoy completed his first Row for a Cure after losing a friend to breast cancer several years earlier. Rowing the 300-mile course around the outer shoreline of Long Island (New York) in a 19-foot ocean rescue boat, Rick became a major fundraiser for cancer research and promised to "row for a cure" every year until a reasonable range of safe cancer therapies have been discovered, studied, proven effective and made available to patients.
Sheryl Crow, who happened to be performing at the Jones Beach Theater during the first Row for a Cure event, sent Rick an autographed photo along with a note of support on the evening of his arrival at Jones Beach. Following her own cancer diagnosis in 2006, Sheryl Crow has become a living testament to the power of positive action in the personal and global fight against this large category of diseases we call "cancer."
An amazing turn of events occurred five months after Rick completed his first Row for a Cure -- A Fight Against Cancer
This man who had dedicated so much of his life to the fight against cancer was diagnosed with malignant melanoma and suddenly found himself fighting for his own life in addition to fighting for the lives of other cancer patients.
A lifelong Long Islander and father of five, Rick became involved in ocean rowing in 1969, his ocean rescue training year, and his passion for the sport continues today. In partnership with Bay Shore High School physical education teacher Bill Blackman, Rick worked with Dowling College administrators and crew team coaches to help Bill establish the first high school rowing program on the south shore of Long Island.
Rick worked for the New York State Parks Department as an ocean lifeguard for 39 years. During the early part of his professional career, while lifeguarding on summer weekends at Jones Beach and Robert Moses State Parks, Rick worked as an animal health technician before branching out into veterinary equipment and pharmaceutical sales in 1979. Making the transition from veterinary to human health care in 1990, he became the New York District Manager for medical test kit manufacturer SmithKline Diagnostics (SKD), and advanced during the next several years to become SKD's Integrated Health Care Programs Manager in 1994.
In 1996, while juggling responsibilities as President-elect of the Northeast Chapter of the Medical Marketing Association and Integrated Health Care Programs Manager, Rick spearheaded SKD’s sponsorship of a nationwide colorectal cancer education campaign and other elements of the Digestive Health Initiative, a massive outreach program conducted by a consortium of professional medical associations under the umbrella of the American Digestive Health Foundation. This multi-dimensional physician and patient education campaign, focused on prevention and early detection, was so successful that Rick was asked to participate in highly confidential discussions pertaining to potential strategic alliances between SKD and various pharmaceutical manufacturers with a vested interest in selling the therapeutic products that are ordered following a confirmed diagnosis. These experiences and his attendance at many FDA Advisory Committee meetings gave Rick both a comprehensive and an "up close and personal" view of the medical industry -- a rather unique perspective of the diagnostics and pharmaceutical sectors separately and collaboratively -- a perspective that even the most seasoned veterans on each side of the industry rarely ever have an opportunity to see. This eye-opening view of what goes on behind the scenes in the world of the “drug lords” gave rise to so many disagreements that Rick, standing on principle, finally submitted his resignation in November, 1997.
Rick and his wife, Holli Dunayer-Shalvoy, live in Long Beach, New York where Rick works as an independent consultant and dedicates most of his free time to the fight against cancer.
A Question for Senator Clinton is the title of an acclaimed opinion editorial (op-ed) that was published in Suffolk Life, the largest weekly newspaper east of the Mississippi River, reaching over 545,000 Long Island homes. Rick Shalvoy wrote the editorial during the spring of 2006 after spending two days in Washington, D.C. speaking with the health policy advisors of various members of Congress about the Health Freedom Protection Act.
Please take a moment to read the op-ed, reprinted below along with a copy of the editorial as it appeared in the newspaper. Please note as well that the Health Freedom Protection Act, referenced in the 2006 op-ed as H.R. 4282, was reintroduced in the 110th Congress as H.R. 2117. The Health Freedom Protection Act has not yet been reintroduced in the 111th Congress.
This 800-word version of the op-ed (above) was submitted to dozens of newspapers and magazines during the spring of 2006. Many editors who seemed interested in publishing it requested to see Rick's commentator qualifications and insisted on a disclosure statement confirming the absence of any conflicts of interest. They failed, however, to disclose their own glaring conflicts of interest. At the end of the process, Suffolk Life was the only major publication that agreed to publish the editorial. The others clearly did not want to ruffle the feathers of the pharmaceutical industry, an industry they rely upon for a significant percentage of their advertising revenue.
In response to requests for commentator qualifications and disclosure statements, Rick submitted the following:
DISCLOSURE STATEMENTS
During the summer of 1998, when the Clintons (the President and First Lady) were vacationing at the home of Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw in East Hampton, the Secret Service had established a “No Boat” security zone in the Atlantic Ocean that spanned a 3-mile radius from the Spielberg-Capshaw property. A news story about the Row for a Cure event, which was in progress at that time, had apparently come to the attention of the Clintons, and Jamie Lee Curtis made a comment on an evening talk show about how ridiculous it was that the Secret Service was going to force me to row around the security zone. After surfing my boat into a treacherous inlet that was navigable by no other means in a 19-foot vessel (this was before I was scheduled to row past East Hampton), collapsing and drifting off into a deep sleep in the Row for a Cure motor home, I was awakened about two hours later by a volunteer who told me that we had arrived at an East Hampton firehouse for a meet-and-greet event with the Clintons. Forcing my mop-headed body to walk and my eyes to remain open, I looked like a poster boy for the 1936 horror film, The Walking Dead. [And....as if that wasn't mortifying enough, I made a "faux pas fool" out of myself at another event that week. After darting into the bathroom at the Baldwin-Basinger home, upon exiting I realized that President Clinton did not just so happen to be standing next to the bathroom door -- he had been waiting on line to get into the bathroom!] In any event, back on the water after all of that inadvertent irreverence, when I finally did reach the edge of the “No Boat” zone, I was greeted by Secret Service personnel and a Coast Guard crew that had been ordered to escort me through the zone, saving me quite a bit of time as I did not have to row around the 3-mile zone. This episode was followed by a congratulatory letter from Hillary and, later in the year, a holiday greeting card from the Clintons.
During the 1999 Row for a Cure, when the First Lady was house shopping in Westchester County and preparing for her listening tour of New York, Hillary called my cell phone to wish me well as I was rowing in that same area of East Hampton. Several photo ops and letters from the White House, another holiday greeting card and one Row for a Cure later, I found myself standing in a ballroom at the Grand Hyatt on Election Night congratulating the First Lady for winning the Senate seat that Senator Moynihan (may he rest in peace) had been keeping warm for her.
StopFDACensorship.org Coalition
My StopFDACensorship.org Coalition membership is disclosed in the submitted text. It is important to note, however, that I am not being paid for any work I do in connection with generating support for the Health Freedom Protection Act. Please note as well that I have no financial interest whatsoever in the dietary supplement industry. All of my efforts in support of this legislation are being conducted strictly as a consumer and a concerned citizen.
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
Nobel Laureate Dr. Harold Varmus, President and CEO of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, has always been happy to participate in the Row for a Cure event as my rowing partner for the East River segment of the course, even during the years when the event has not supported a project at his institution. This makes a bold statement about the man himself. My friendship with Dr. Varmus has as much to do with an interconnected personal history as it does with a shared interest in rowing and, of course, cancer research. My former newspaper delivery customer, the famous public works emperor and New York State Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, had appointed Dr. Varmus’ father, Dr. Frank Varmus, Chief Medical Officer of Jones Beach State Park. I had been an unwilling patient of the elder Dr. Varmus on more than one occasion as one of the many children who needed to have boardwalk splinters removed at the Jones Beach Central Mall First Aid Office, which, at times, looked more like a hospital emergency room than a first aid office. Dr. Harold Varmus and I graduated from the same high school (13 years apart) and, during our June 15, 2001 meeting in his office, we were able to answer a number of "Where are they now?" questions for one another regarding family members and mutual friends. Carefully following his outstanding career over the years, I was delighted to learn that Dr. Varmus had won a shared Nobel Prize in 1989 for his groundbreaking discovery work regarding the genetic underpinnings of carcinogenesis. After serving as Director of the National Institutes of Health for 6 years beginning in November, 1993, Dr. Varmus accepted the president and chief executive titles that were offered to him by Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in 1999. While this may seem to be a rather unusual disclosure for someone who has a reputation for eschewing "conventional" cancer therapy, the underlying fact is that I have a great deal of respect for good science no matter where the data path leads. I am simply trying to support paths of research that have traditionally been ignored due to a lack of corporate and government interest.
The "Row 2001 finish with Dr. Varmus" photo below was taken on July 10, 2001. This photo was taken in the East River with the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in the background -- 63 days before the September 11 terrorist attacks. Rick Shalvoy (left, in bow seat) and Dr. Harold Varmus were rowing toward South Street Seaport at that time.
Three years later, the "2004 Row for a Cure" photo was taken while Dr. Varmus (left, in stern seat) and Rick were in the boat adjacent to Pier 16 at South Street Seaport.
2004 Row for a Cure
Row 2001 Finish with Dr. Varmus
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