I have had the privilege of accepting young men and women into medical oncology fellowship programs at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the University of Vermont Cancer Center and MD Anderson Cancer Center and I have watched many of them shine as they took on both academic and community oncology positions throughout the United States and the world.
Waun Ki Hong was special.
By law, the Food and Drug Administration is required to determine whether a drug, device, biologic, or medical device is “safe and effective.” But the FDA determination does not control whether the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will pay for it. To satisfy CMS, medical products and services must be “reasonable and necessary,” meaning...
As a radiation oncologist, I am struck by how often the decisive variable in lung cancer is not the sophistication of our therapy, but the timing of our encounter with the disease. The American Cancer Society projects 618,120 cancer deaths in the United States in 2025, with lung cancer remaining as the single largest contributor,...
