Don’t expect miracles in the administration’s last months in office.
Advertisement
A highlight of President Obama’s last State of the Union address was his call to arms in the fight against cancer. Obama assigned Vice President Joe Biden to figure out how to speed that progress. “It’s hard. I don’t think they can come up with the funding”‘. That research effort seeks to develop targeted treatments for cancer and other diseases based on a person’s genetic and molecular profile.
“We are really talking about the lunar landing now”, said Arnold M. Baskies, a surgical oncologist in Moorestown and national vice chair of the American Cancer Society board. Back then, when much less was known about how vastly different many cancers are, it was expected to be a far simpler fight. For all pediatric cancers, survival at five years went from 58% of kids diagnosed between 1975-77 to 83% for those diagnosed from 2005-11.
He points to Western Europe, which has lower cancer death rates even with the existing technologies. Does it mean prevent cancer?
His son Beau had died of brain cancer earlier in 2015.
Cancer researcher Barrie Bode agrees that a cancer “cure” is unlikely and adds “when I have given that answer it is a disappointment to a lot of people”, but he too thinks the science is closing in on making this something “that we will be able to effectively manage”, Bode said. So when he announced a bid “to cure cancer”, more than a few eyebrows were raised.
Chemotherapy is still a mainstay of cancer treatment.
For the 14th year, runners and walkers are raised awareness and funds to benefit some of the most vulnerable patients – children who are cared for at St. Jude Children’s Hospital.
An even newer form of immunotherapy is being developed to increase the amount of patients’ cancer-attacking cells.
Not because new cures are right around the corner for complex diseases that have bedeviled humanity for centuries, they said, but because impassioned leadership and new funding could help realize the potential of recent breakthroughs.
MCEVERS: He compared this to the US sending a man to the moon, you know, something that, at the time, seemed insane but was eventually doable. Velculescu says Biden’s efforts could spur larger collaborations.
“I know that we can help solidify a genuine global commitment to end cancer as we know it today - and inspire a new generation of scientists to pursue new discoveries and the bounds of human endeavor”, Biden said. His group wants Medicare to change that. Friedberg said Wilmot now receives close to $20 million in funding annually from the National Cancer Institute.
The president said that Vice President Joe Biden has been working with Congress “to give scientists at the National Institutes of Health the strongest resources they’ve had in over a decade”.
Advertisement
Most children and teens with cancer are enrolled in clinical trials that carefully guide their treatment, and that’s credited with markedly improving survival of pediatric cancer over the past 30 years. The cost of a complete gene sequencing for a patient has dropped to about $1,000, so they can now be treated in a customized way, instead of just with the blunt instruments of chemotherapy and radiation that treat everyone’s cancer the same.
