When CVS made the decision to forego tobacco sales, the estimated $2 billion in annual revenues it gave up amounts to more than twice the amount of money ACS collects in a year (The Cancer Letter, Feb. 7). However, ACS positions itself as the vanguard of tobacco control, and critics say that close association with a retailer that profits from tobacco undermines the society’s own goals and harms its brand.
How’s this for a paradox: The better cancer centers become at keeping patients alive, the more expensive cancer care becomes. This brutal tradeoff hits harder in rural areas, where the cancer burden is higher and the investigator and clinical trial representation is lower.
