Cancer research funding in USA

Despite the current stability of overall cancer incidence in the USA, for the past 2 years cancer-related deaths have fallen. This gratifying trend, laid out in the American Cancer Society’s Annual Report to the Nation (Howe et al., 2006), has left cancer researchers with the rosy feeling that their hard work is starting to pay off on a grand scale. And, with such obvious evidence of the benefits of investment to show to federal decision-makers, cancer researchers rightly presumed that funding for their work would increase in line with the predicted increase in cancer burden – expected to overtake heart disease as the leading cause of death by 2010. Unfortunately, the high-level commitment to cancer research exemplified by Richard Nixon’s War on Cancer, launched in 1971, seems to have vanished over the past few years. Instead, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the USA’s main cancer research funding body, has been struggling to cope with stagnating appropriations from Congress, which equate to actual funding cuts – and the future is not looking any better. Last year, the NCI received around US$4.8 billion dollars from federal funds, an increase of less than 0.5% over the previous year’s income and a continuation of the trend for below-inflation rises begun in 2003. With costs of doing research growing by at least 3% a year, these miniscule increases are putting real pressure on the NCI and its associated structures to cut back on large projects, eliminate smaller ones, and reduce the scale of their investment. According to Dr Richard Schilsky, President Elect of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and a Professor of Medicine and Associate Dean at the University of Chicago Medical Center, these cuts could not have come at a worse time. ‘‘We have more drugs in pipeline than ever before and a better understanding of cancer. In many ways, this is intellectually the most exciting time in cancer research. But, paradoxically, it is a time when young people are questioning whether they can have a viable career,’’ he said.