It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, and for this transgression, you have my deepest apologies. It took some pretty dramatic, positive news to break my logjam, but this morning’s news (WASHINGTON POST - US Cancer Death Rate Down) about the decline in cancer death rates did the trick.
The nation’s cancer research leadership needs to leverage these good findings from the American Cancer Society and continue pressuring Congress to increase funding for the National Cancer Institute. Today’s coverage cites double digit declines in cancer death rates for both women and men from 1990 through 2005. The irony is that since 2005, federal cancer research funding levels have been effectively frozen in time, increasing at the annual rate of 0.0275 percent, or less than three-hundredths of one percent! (Is that even statistically significant?)
We make progress fighting cancer inch-by-inch, but it’s progress nonetheless. Now’s the time to increase our investment in preventing, diagnosing and treating all kinds of cancer, and not by micro-percentages. Let’s raise priority for the most lethal tumor types such as pancreatic and liver cancers, as well as thoroughly examine why disparities exist in cancer incidence and outcomes among different populations.
With the ACS’s Cancer Facts and Figures 2008 in hand, now would also be a good time for Presidential and Congressional candidates to agree to stop bashing the pharmaceutical industry and instead develop more productive and hopeful messages about the importance of encouraging innovation in cancer diagnosis and treatment among the public and private sectors.
If it works, support it. And more than three-hundredths of one percent annually, please!
-John Seng, Founder and President
