We are not a partisan magazine. We will support any Congressional initiative that advances cancer research and services, no matter which party leads it. However, we will also criticize any attempt by either party to restrict progress. People of all stripes are welcome here and always will be.
But we do care deeply about cancer. And there is simply no American President who has been more dedicated to supporting cancer causes than President Joe Biden. He has placed his work with cancer experts as his greatest accomplishment.
Never in my worst dreams did I think that cancer would become a political football. The Cancer Moonshot is dealing with the real world and should be supported by folks no matter what your party affiliation.
We were pleased to have gotten an acknowledgment from President Biden, who believed in the stories we wrote about the Cancer Moonshot, which has been such a boon for cancer research.
As many of our readers know, I’ve been fighting cancer off and on for more than 25 years. I was fortunate to have a 20-year remission.
When the cancer came back late last year it was diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), the most common type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) in the United States and worldwide, accounting for about 22 percent of newly diagnosed cases of B-cell NHL in the United States. More than 18,000 people are diagnosed with DLBCL each year.
The cancer was very aggressive. So much so that my oncologist told me that if I didn’t do CAR T immunotherapy treatment within a few weeks of my diagnosis, I would likely die. I didn’t hesitate. It was a long and at times difficult treatment, but it gave me my life back. I remain in remission.
Since we kicked off this magazine, we have worked with many of the cancer industry’s most prominent doctors, scientists, pols, journalists and more.
We are also proud to be working with big pharma, biotech concerns, liquid biopsy companies and much more to explain what these people do and how they are moving the ball forward. But at times it has gotten too political and too mean-spirited.
Once upon a time, cancer was a no-brainer. It was something that everyone in the White House and Congress wanted to fight. It was a universal evil. Both sides of the aisle.
Going as far back as Richard Nixon, whose National Cancer Act in 1971 was called by many “the War Against Cancer.” That was the year my grandfather died. I was 10 years old but I knew what cancer was.
Nixon’s effort to end cancer was the real beginning of a national effort to fight this horrible disease. Some think that Nixon’s initiative was simply too early. After all, scientists just didn’t know enough about the workings of cancer and it has of course taken more than a half-century to really begin to understand how it all works in the body.
But Dr. Fred Appelbaum, deputy director and executive vice president of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, told the Fred Hutch Cancer Center a few years ago that history will be kind to Nixon’s National Cancer Act.
Appelbaum was in medical school when the bill was signed, and he has said since that the law has made an enormous difference for the cancer research center where he has worked since 1978.
“Without that act, the Hutch would not exist,” he said in a Hutch piece.
He said that the signing of the bill on Dec. 23, 1971 was a pivotal moment that helped make possible the recent spate of advances in cancer treatment.
“It has already paid off in the cures of hundreds of thousands of patients,” he said. “And it paved the way for the exciting developments in immunotherapy and molecularly based treatments that are filling the headlines today.”
Pols on both sides of the aisle backed the initiative during the final weeks of Barack Obama’s presidency, passing the 21st Century Cures Act, and allotting $1.8 billion to the cause, nearly unanimously.
At the time, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called it “the most significant legislation passed by this Congress.”
But Republicans are now singing a different tune. And it is a shrill, ugly song. They rejected the Cures initiative this year, and also cut off Biden’s most direct Moonshot funding stream.
The stakes are higher than ever because we have seen so many breakthroughs, especially in just the last five years. This is not the time to dump what has been an enormously effective and non-partisan piece of legislation.
Two weeks ago, in what was the first public event planned since Biden pulled out of the 2024 election, he announced a major financial award from the cancer-curing policy arm he created in the wake of his son Beau Biden’s death.
Biden announced that $150 million in awards from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health would go to support eight teams of researchers around the country working on ways to help surgeons more successfully remove tumors from people with cancer. It brings the total amount awarded by the agency to develop breakthrough treatments for cancers to $400 million.
He wants to cut American cancer deaths in half over 25 years and boost support for patients and their families. “I’m confident in our capacity to do that. I know we can, but it’s not just personal — it’s about what’s possible,” Biden said at the time.
