You may have seen the article entitled “In Long Drive to Cure Cancer, Advances Have Been Elusive”, on the front page of the April 24, 2009 New York Times. It points out that despite the investment in cancer research, cancer has not been cured, and compares cancer mortality to heart disease and flu. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A00EFDD143CF937A15757C0A96F9C8B63

Dr. Waxman strongly feels that the article significantly underestimates the importance and amount of progress that has been made in fighting cancer. Further, in the last ten years there has been an unprecedented deepening of knowledge about how cancer grows and spreads, which is setting the stage for the revolution in treatment that is already beginning to bear fruit with medicines such as Herceptin and the cure for acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) developed by grantees of the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation.

Dr. Waxman wrote to the New York Times:

“The article ‘In Long Drive to Cure Cancer, Advances Have Been Elusive’ on April 24, raises a number of interesting and important issues.  However, comparing the drop in mortality among cancer, heart disease and pneumonia is misleading.  The fight against cancer is aimed at actually curing the root cause of the disease, while heart research is aimed at improving symptomatic relief.  There are still more patients with Stage 4 heart disease and they die sooner than patients with Stage 4 cancer.  Pneumonia and flu are infectious diseases, decidedly not comparable to the challenges of understanding how cells become cancerous.  Fighting flu has not changed in the last ten years, while there have been many, many advances in understanding what causes cancer and how to fight it more effectively with fewer side effects.  We have, in fact, cured some kinds of cancer. It is just a matter of time till we cure them all.”

Regards,

Samuel Waxman, M.D.
Scientific Director
Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation