Mother of Child Battling Cancer Backs Prop 38 in Hopes Medical Research, New Treatment Options Can Save Her Son’s Life

DANVILLE, CA, UNITED STATES, October 1, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- In a guest opinion published last Friday in the Pleasanton Weekly, Bhavika Taunk, a Danville mother and advocate for childhood cancer patients, shares the story of her son’s ongoing battle with leukemia and the role medical research continues to play in giving her family additional treatment options as standard therapies have failed.

Taunk’s son was four years old when he was diagnosed with Philadelphia chromosome-positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia. In the years that followed, he underwent chemotherapy, experienced multiple relapses and received a bone marrow transplant from his brother. In her column, Taunk writes that when standard therapies failed, advances made possible through medical research gave doctors new options. And while her son remains terminally ill, Taunk and her family are holding on to hope that a life-saving cure might be a clinical trial away.

In her guest opinion piece, “Prop 38 gives my son and others a fighting chance,” Taunk describes the experience of caring for a young child with cancer, the importance of continued pediatric cancer research and her support for Proposition 38, the Immunology Medical Research & Cures Initiative.

“Loving a child through cancer has taught me to hold two things at once: the fight for one more day and the fight for a future for others,” said Taunk. “We need more treatments, more breakthroughs and more hope. Voting Yes on Prop 38 gives families like mine a fighting chance, not just against cancer, but against everything that comes after the diagnosis.”

Prop 38 will provide $8.4 billion to accelerate immunology research to help cure and prevent cancer, Alzheimer's, heart disease, and other persistent diseases. Immunotherapies harness the body's own immune system to prevent and treat diseases, and they are already successfully treating patients with melanoma, lung cancer, leukemia and lymphoma. Prop 38 will fund the next generation of this research for other devastating diseases, like Parkinson’s, diabetes, ALS, muscular dystrophy, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and multiple sclerosis.

Prop 38 represents a new approach to medical research funding, creating a collaborative statewide network that combines competitive research grants with an immunology institute designed to help turn discoveries into life-saving treatments and cures. Half of the funding will support competitive grants at California universities and nonprofit research institutions, while the other half will support a nonprofit immunology institute affiliated with the University of California that can bring together leading scientists, technology, laboratories, patients and clinical trials.

The timing is urgent. Uncertainty and cuts to federal research funding are shutting down clinical trials and delaying discoveries at the exact moment immunology science has momentum. At least 160 active clinical trials nationwide have been affected by the termination of National Institutes of Health grants in 2025. In California, universities began curtailing biomedical research and delaying hiring as federal grants were terminated or withheld.

Prop 38 is designed to pay for itself. Ten percent of all proceeds from the licensing of immunotherapies developed under Prop 38 must be returned to California to offset the measure's total costs, including interest. Additionally, any cure or immunotherapy developed will be provided to California patients at a 20 percent discount below the national average. Prop 38 also includes strict accountability requirements, including:
- Two percent cap on state administrative expenses
- Public disclosure of spending
- Independent financial audits
- For-profit corporations are not eligible for grant funding

Learn more at YESon38.com, including a coalition list and what supporters are saying.

Robin Swanson
YES on Prop 38
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