As we are all aware, the new presidential administration is moving rapidly to change how science, including health sciences, will be conducted and funded by the federal government, including research supported by the National Institutes of Health.Â
As a physician-scientist who has navigated drug development from lab bench to bedside to executive boardroom, I want to touch upon a subject that is near and dear to my heart: the state of American science—a linchpin of our healthcare system and national competitiveness.
As cancer specialists, we have to constantly be on the lookout, alert for trends as they emerge—because they might impact the way we best deliver advice or care, or because trends may inform us about specific influences that drive cancers.
Knowledge is power, and this information, true for many cancers, is valuable for everyone to know—either to have an awareness of their own bodies and the factors that they can control, or to create spaces for empathy with persons they might encounter with cancer.Â
As oncology enters a new era of precision medicine, the Food and Drug Administration’s evolving biomarker strategy aims to ensure that life-saving therapies are tailored to individual patient needs, fostering safer and more effective treatments. Historically, therapies were approved with broad indications based on overall efficacy, even when outcomes for biomarker-positive and -negative patients were... […]
Today, our world is small. It feels smaller all the time. In a few hours we can get to any point on the globe.
As cancer clinicians, we spend years learning how to think objectively and rationally when supporting patients who have responded to a cancer diagnosis with anger and fear.
Being summarily dismissed, denigrated, and divided is both dehumanizing and taking place in a radical and disorienting manner. The effect is traumatizing.
Indirect costs are a component of a grant award that recognizes expenses for a project that, for efficiency’s sake, are aggregated across projects and divided proportionally to projects rather than explicitly charged to each project. They are influenced by location and services provided.
Isolating science by shutting down communication risks building up silos, stymying scientific innovation and dissemination, and creating a culture that excludes rather than includes.
