Cancer’s resources problem
I have said on a number of occasions that lack of resources is one of our biggest NET cancer problems.
Yesterday, I came across a tweet or a post somewhere that said, our problem with cancer is not a lack of ideas, but rather a lack of resources.
It is…not something I can say no to.
That statement gives me pause. I have certainly detailed the money problems of NET cancer here often enough. Our financial difficulties have held Americans back from exploring PRRT and currently hold all of us back from testing the new viral therapy I have written about over the last two weeks.
Some cancer history
Once upon a time the cancer community was starved for both ideas and resources. In the 1930s and ’40s there was little anyone could do for leukemia patients beyond make them comfortable as they waited for death. Sydney Farber, one of the key players in the modern history of chemo-therapy, was not a surgeon or oncologist; he was a pathologist who had tired of doing autopsies on children stricken with leukemia.
When the rich catch a cold, the poor catch pneumonia.
He had an idea about using cytotoxic chemicals on children in the hope he could prolong their lives–or even cure them. His financial resources were slender–and he had to get parents to submit their children to a painful therapy with no promise of success.
Later, Farber worked with the nascent American Cancer Society to create greater financial resources through both private giving and government help. Eventually this culminated in the War on Cancer.
Killing the War on Cancer
Unfortunately, the real War in Vietnam and
the necessities of the Cold War intervened. War requires an all-out effort–and one cannot fight too many wars at one time with great hope of success. The War on Cancer died in all but name shortly after it was conceived.
Financial resources for cancer research have been in short supply ever since. And that shortage has resulted in a shortage of doctors and researchers at all levels of cancer research. It has resulted in a shortage of facilities and equipment as well.
…a pathologist who had tired of doing autopsies on children…
And when there are shortages priorities have to be set. One hopes those priorities are set on the basis of the most good for the greatest number, but politics and perceived rather than actual need also play a role. Governments have to concern themselves with public relations aspects that we would prefer were not part of the thinking process. But the public wants constant evidence of progress. The result is a reluctance on the part of governments to pursue anything other than low-hanging fruit–things that are clearly destined for success.
Defrosting NET cancer
And charities follow the government lead. If the government does not think your particular cancer is important, neither will those of a charitable mind.
If breast cancer, prostate cancer, and lung cancer are hurting for resources, how much more so is NET cancer? And with major cuts coming to the federal budget whether we will or no, how much smaller will the resources be for the major cancers a year from now?
That statement gives me pause.
When the rich catch a cold, the poor catch pneumonia. In the case of NET cancer, we already have pneumonia. Do we go back in the deep freeze we were in after 1968? And if that proves true, will that virus in Sweden ever be defrosted?
I got a note this weekend from ACS CAN, the lobbying arm of the American Cancer Society asking me to help man their table at the ACS Leadership Summit this week. It is, under the circumstances, not something I can say no to.
