Huntsmans' cancer hospital is family affair

As three dozen members of the Huntsman family filled four rows, Monday's dedication of the new Huntsman Cancer Hospital looked much like a family reunion.

That seemed fitting since the $100 million facility, the only one like it in the Intermountain West, focuses on family.

"(Patients) will find kindness and solace within these walls. They will never be alone, and their families and loved ones can join them with special accommodations built into this facility for caregivers," said Jon Huntsman Sr., himself a cancer survivor. "They will be treated as kings and queens, and every effort known throughout the globe will be employed to fulfill their comfort to aid in their personal battle to eradicate this horrifying disease."

When it starts admitting patients around July 1, the 276,344-square-foot building will have the most up-to-date cancer treatments available in the region, offering new technology in mammography and radiation therapy.

President Gordon B. Hinckley of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and interim University of Utah President Lorris Betz also spoke to the estimated 300 other local religious leaders, politicians, foundation donors, cancer survivors and news media packed into the Huntsman Cancer Hospital south circle for the dedication.

"Suffering has been a burden for mankind from the beginning of time," President Hinckley said. "We are here to dedicate and consecrate this place that has been designed to lift the burden of illness from those who have been affected by disease . . . and the scourge of cancer will be eliminated."

Huntsman, whose mother, stepmother and father died from cancer, stressed the need for ongoing research into the disease that he said will kill 550,000 Americans this year.

"It will soon overtake heart disease as Americans' number one killer. This is unacceptable. America's combined technology put a team on the moon 35 years ago, but we have not yet conquered cancer," he said. "We have a world-class cancer hospital for patient care, and today we open the latest state-of-the-art cancer hospital for patient care. But this is only the beginning. . . . We must do more, and we can never give up."

The hospital includes 50 private inpatient rooms, 19 exam rooms and four operating rooms. Each of the rooms is private and contains such features as separate speakers and sound controls, and more space is available for family members to stay with the patients.