This September, the Cancer History Project is focusing on the evolution of cancer advocacy over the past 50 years. Here are selected archives recognizing and celebrating advocates—and remembering their legacy.
At first glance, the Department of Defense and breast cancer research might not seem like an easy or natural fit.
When the Cancer History Project launched in January, co-editors Otis Brawley and Paul Goldberg laid out a plan to build a lasting resource for the history of oncology (The Cancer Letter, Jan. 8, 2021). It was “the beginning of a process of storytelling.”
On the heels of the National Cancer Act of 1974, then-NCI director Frank Rauscher identifies four more Comprehensive Cancer Centers, bringing the number to 16. Today, there are 51 NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers.
Letter to the editor by Donald L. “Skip” Trump, MD, and Eric T. Rosenthal, coauthors of Centers of the Cancer Universe: A Half-Century of Progress Against Cancer
On April 25, 1991, speaking to the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy opened the National Cancer Act’s 20th anniversary hearing with praise for advances in research, concerns about cancer disparities, and a battle cry: “The War on Cancer is far from won.”
The battle over which institution gets to call itself the first cancer center is extremely complex—in part because the contenders predate NCI’s definition of a “cancer center.”
To launch our July coverage highlighting institutions, here is a collection of articles by our contributors about their history.
An NCI press conference is rarely a tabloid affair—except on Sept. 30, 1974. What was anticipated to be a dry occasion shifted when Betty Ford, wife of President Gerald Ford, underwent a radical mastectomy Sept. 28.
Alan Rabson and Ruth Kirschstein came to NIH together and became a graceful power couple. Kirschstein would become a key contributor to the development of a safe and effective polio vaccine and the first woman director of a major institute at the NIH.
