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EARLIER DIAGNOSES & TREATMENTS ARE SAVING LIVES TURNS 50 * • Before President Nixon signed the National Cancer Act of 1971, a visionary group of women founded “Cancer League of Colorado” in 1969 to help raise money and awareness to fight cancer and honor those they had lost to the disease. • Cancer remains the leading cause of death in Colorado (Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, 2023). • The five-year survival rate in Colorado after a cancer diagnosis in 1970 was at best 50%. According to the Colorado Cancer Registry statistics the five-year survival rate for all cancers and all genders in Colorado is now 70%. • “When the war on cancer started, somehow people thought we could do it in 10 years. But going to the moon was easier. It takes a long time to understand complicated diseases* .” • More than $100 billion in national expenditures, and 5 decades later, we are much closer to winning the war on cancer. Cancer League of Colorado supports research and service grants impacting all cancer types.
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Among the most notable wins from the early days of the war is the establishment of NCI-designated cancer centers across the country that, for the first time, tied scientific discoveries more closely to bedside cancer care. Today, there are 71 centers in 36 states and the District of Columbia. Studies show they often deliver better cancer survival and recovery rates than other hospitals. The war also cracked open the hidden universe of cancer genetics. In 1979, the most commonly mutated gene in human cancer was discovered. By 2018, the Cancer Genome Atlas had enough DNA data to fill 530,000 DVDs. “It took billions (of dollars) to sequence the first cancer genome.”
The pace of discovery for treatments has accelerated as well. Between 1941 and 1970, the FDA approved 16 cancer drugs. Between 1971 and 2020, it OK’d more than 160. Many are brand-new types that cancer specialists call the “fourth and fifth dimensions” of cancer treatment. (Chemotherapy, surgery and radiation are the original three). It’s a powerful advance.” The most important thing that has impacted the ‘War on Cancer” nationally is increased funding for research. This research has led to major breakthroughs that have led to much higher survivability rates among many top forms of cancer. Cancer is not one disease, but many hundreds of diseases that will require years of ongoing research in order to find eventual treatments.
*Cited Source Credit: Excerpts from “As the War on Cancer Turns 50, Earlier Diagnoses and Treatments are saving Lives” by Sara Harrar, Published November 4th, 2021 by AARP magazine
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