Auhtors: Watson J
Abstract
THE National Cancer Institute, which has overseen American efforts on researching and combating cancers since 1971, should take on an ambitious new goal for the next decade: the development of new drugs that will provide lifelong cures for many, if not all, major cancers. Beating cancer now is a realistic ambition because, at long last, we largely know its true genetic and chemical characteristics.
This was not the case when President Richard Nixon and Congress declared a “war on cancer” more than 35 years ago. As a member of the new National Cancer Advisory Board, I argued that money for “pure cancer research” would be a more prudent expenditure of federal funds than creating new clinical cancer centers. My words, however, fell on deaf ears, and the institute took on a clinical mission. My reward for openly disagreeing was being kicked off the advisory board after only two years.
While overall cancer death rates in the United States began to decrease slowly in the 1990s, cancer continues to take an appalling toll, claiming nearly 560,000 lives in 2006, some 200,000 more fatalities than in the year before the War on Cancer began. Any claim that we are still “at war” elicits painful sarcasm. Hardly anyone I know works on Sunday or even much on Saturday, as almost no one believes that his or her current work will soon lead to a big cure.
Keywords: cancer
