During this and the coming year, ASCO is ramping up its advocacy efforts in calling for increased federal funding to support clinical cancer trials. As part of an extensive effort to educate and mobilize its membership to call for a renewed national investment in federally funded cancer research, ASCO has developed an educational series of articles that explores the decade-long decline in federal funding for cancer research—and why this decline must be reversed.
Cancer treatment is poised to become targeted to each tumor’s molecular profile, but this leap will be out of reach unless we sustain the federally funded research that has brought cancer care to this point.
The U.S. clinical cancer infrastructure is under threat as never before. Federal funding for clinical cancer research has remained flat for more than a decade, and when adjusted for inflation, funding has actually decreased. National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, MD, recently called 2013 the “darkest ever” year for agency funding.
ASCO is raising the alarm about continuing erosion of cancer research funding and urging the federal government to take bold new action to ensure the pace of progress is not stalled. To read this series, and learn more about how to get involved, please visit www.asco.org/advocacy/nih-funding. ■
© 2013. American Society of Clinical Oncology. All rights reserved.
