Government budget cuts deter progress in fight against cancer

Many scientists fear that the yearly reductions in the United States' federal budget earmarks for cancer research will undermine current research in the battle against cancer.

Cancer researchers from the United States came together during a May weekend in Chicago at the 44th annual conference of the American Society of Oncology.

"I want to reinforce that today cancer research faces a very, very significant funding crisis," said Friday Doctor Nancy Davidson, a professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins University and current chairwoman of the society.
Researchers claim that without continued funding, they will be unable to turn recent discoveries in the field of genetics into effective disease treatments.

"That will be difficult, even impossible to achieve these goals without increases in cancer research funding," Davidson said.

The National Institutes of Health has maintained a flat budget for five years now, and when adjusted for inflation, the National Institutes of Health have lost 500 million dollars in real terms.

In the past few decades, treatments available to cancer sufferers have improved dramatically. While patients were once faced with the choice of extreme surgical options and poisonous chemotherapy, a wide range of treatment options is now available.

"Today the situation has changed quite dramatically," Davidson pointed out. "Advances in science and technologies can reduce the burden of cancer."

The director of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. John Niederhuber, maintains that the lack in budget increases over the past five years "is having a real impact" on the effectiveness and results of cancer research.

"We cannot, I believe, sustain this -- and have our country continue to be look upon as a leader in biomedical research," he warned.

The World Health Organization says that 7.6 million people died of cancer worldwide last year. That accounts for 13 percent of all natural deaths across the globe.

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