A World Without Cancer by Margaret Cuomo

Author:Margaret Cuomo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Vearsa
Published: 2012-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

THE PROMISE OF PREVENTION

THERE IS MUCH WE CAN DO TODAY TO FOREstall cancer, making the absence of urgency outrageous. “We know now what behaviors can reduce cancer risk,” says Prevent Cancer’s Carolyn R. Aldigé. “If we applied what we know right now, we could reduce cancer by 50 percent.”

Researcher Graham Colditz, MD, DrPH, agreed. After evaluating the impact of “research-proven strategies and interventions,” he concluded that more than half of all cancers need not occur.1 Dr. Colditz is director of prevention and control at the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center and a professor at Washington University School of Medicine.

If it is true that results from prevention research can take decades, I say let’s not waste any more time. Long-term prevention studies launched 20 years ago would have given us crucial answers today, and many people might never have suffered with cancer.

“Doctors are trying to deal with what’s broken already, rather than trying to prevent it from getting broken,” says Robert P. Heaney, MD, a professor of medicine at John A. Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha.

To realign our approach, I propose that we create a bold new initiative: the National Cancer Prevention Institute (NCPI). This entity, built as part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to target cancer prevention exclusively, would coordinate the many cloistered activities throughout the federal government and lead the way into new arenas.

Where will the money come from? In these challenging economic times, when federal and state budgets are being reduced, this is a legitimate question. Ideally, Congress would provide new funding for the NCPI, based on the pressing needs it will address and the fact that a dedicated cancer prevention strategy saves money in the long run.

If those revenues are not forthcoming, we will have to reallocate resources from the many line items in the federal budget currently dedicated to cancer. By drawing from the existing budgets of the NIH, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and other federal cancer initiatives, proportional to their size, the NCPI need not add to the overall resource burden.

It is not as if the NIH isn’t already funding new health research programs. It is just that the design of those programs is as flawed as the current ones.

In 2012, the NIH established the National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS), reallocating funds from its other programs to generate a $639 million budget. NCATS is supposed to accelerate the pace of research so that drugs, vaccines, and diagnostic tests will become available to patients sooner. It is not actually charged with developing new therapies, but rather with finding innovative ways to push out scientific discoveries more quickly.

Separately, the NIH launched the Cures Acceleration Network (CAN), with $10 million in start-up funding in 2012, and a request for an additional $39.6 million in 2013. Its purpose is “to accelerate the development of high need cures by reducing barriers between research discovery and clinical trials.”2

Neither NCATS nor CAN will exclusively target cancer, and frankly, there appears to be considerable overlap in their goals.

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