my final paper of the semester

My first semester back in school after too many years to count is almost over & for my writing class we had to choose a topic, localize it to ourselves or our community, and write an informative and persuasive or argumentative research paper on it. As a lupus patient and pharmacology major it was pretty easy for me to choose my topic. There hasn't been a single new treatment aproved for lupus in over 50 years. Lupus research is underfunded federally and this has to change. I wrote my paper on pharmaceutical research and why there needs to be more attention paid to diseases like lupus. I also wrote some about my experiences as a research patient and being part of the clinical trials for Benlysta, which could be the first new medicine aproved for lupus since Eisenhower was president. I may be wrong but I am 99.9% sure it's also the FIRST medication successfully developed specifically for lupus treatment.

I posted the paper a few minutes ago in a much longer entry if anybody wants to see what I have learned about lupus, how pharmaceutical research works, and what it's like being part of the clinical trials and being one of the first to recieve a new drug (I have been on BenLysta since phase 2 trials began and was one of the first about 500 people to recieve the drug).