Moon Landing a Better Investment than the War on Cancer
Like millions of other Americans, I watched the non-stop replays of the lunar landing yesterday as we celebrated the 40th anniversary of man’s first step on another celestial body. As an Air Force pilot trainee at the time it happened, I was especially intrigued at the technological threshold we were crossing. It seem more than our minds could comprehend as we tried to grasp the reality that the project was accomplished in such a short period of time. Just a decade earlier, the concept of travel to the moon was relegated to fiction books and comics. Yet, a nation acted on the challenge of its president, even with the backdrop of an unpopular war and civil rights unrest, to accomplish the unthinkable in a period of about seven years. The present estimate of the cost of the entire mission from Mercury through Apollo was about $25 billion in then-year dollars.
I’m sure it won’t surprise you that the secondary impression that I got from reliving the feat 40 years later was how it compares to the war on cancer that was born on the heels of the space race. Two years from now, we will acknowledge the 40th anniversary of the war on cancer. Regrettably, I use the word acknowledge rather than celebrate. With the moon landing, we celebrated a huge victory of a presidential declaration seven years prior. Today, we are still searching for victory in the cancer war that was declared by the president almost 40 years ago. We spent $25 billion to put a man on the moon. We have spent over $200 billion to put an end to cancer. Compare the returns on investment. If we can come together as a nation to accomplish the unimaginable in seven years at a cost of $25 billion, why can’t we accomplish the seemingly less complex in 40 years at a cost of over $200 billion?
I believe that we don’t care enough, collectively as a nation, about winning the war on cancer. It is not of the priority, in government, in the medical community, in our educational institutions, and among the general public, to cause the national focus that the space race enjoyed. We as a society have become hardened and accepting of the idea that the same old traditional concept of trying to kill the cancer cells with chemotherapy and radiation is the only option. We have abrogated our responsibility for creative thinking to the scientists who keep testing the same categories of therapies hoping to find a new chemical compound that works.
The cancer war can be won if we at the grass roots will generate the same fervor that we did in the ’60s and support a new strategy for the war. We must demand the research and development of promising new medicines and theories that enhance the effectiveness of conventional treatment, lower its side effects, and reduce its duration. We must turn to integrative oncologists who practice evidenced-based complementary therapies and reject the exclusively conventional treatment doctors who offer no choices. It’s time for an expedited, aggressive, no-holds-barred paradigm shift to a new strategy for the war on cancer.