Jonathan Mahler in The New York Times:
When America declared war on cancer more than 50 years ago, there was a misguided assumption outside the scientific community that it would be only a matter of years before the disease was eradicated — that defeating cancer would be no different than building an atomic bomb or putting a man on the moon. But there would be no miracle cure: As of this writing, some 40 percent of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their life.
What there would be, however, was decades of minor breakthroughs that would accrue over time, transforming both our understanding of the disease and our ability to treat it. One way to measure the cumulative effect of those breakthroughs is with statistics: In the mid-1970s, America’s five-year cancer-survival rate sat at 49 percent; today, it is 68 percent. You can also correlate America’s sustained investment in cancer research directly with these returns: According to a recent study in The Journal of Clinical Oncology, every $326 that our government spends researching cancer extends a human life by one year. Now an extraordinarily successful scientific research system — one that took decades to build, has saved millions of lives and generated billions of dollars in profits for American companies and investors — is being dismantled before our eyes.
More here.
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