Over the past seven years, as Steven K. Libutti was designing the 12-story, $900-plus million cancer hospital in New Brunswick, NJ, he often thought of the functionality of the building that inspired it: Building 10, the NIH Clinical Center.
I did not find the process of being suddenly without employment as refreshing as one might think. It did, however, provide a forced opportunity to engage in self-reflection, to critically analyze the situation around cancer, and to face the complex set of problems that cancer, and society, present to us.
In his first sit-down interview since beginning his role as FDA commissioner 17 days earlier, Marty Makary, a former Johns Hopkins surgeon and the only Trump pick for HHS whose confirmation received Democratic support, said he would speed up approvals for rare-disease treatments by reducing reliance on animal testing and shifting towards organoids and computational models.
The American Cancer Society’s recent report on the increasing incidence rates of colorectal cancer in young adults once again rang an alarm bell for adults over 45 to get checked, especially if they are having symptoms. But as an oncologist with more than 40 years of experience, I also believe that this should be a clarion call to scientists and researchers, and for regulators at the FDA.
Over the past week, as cancer control experts scoured through a confidential budget document called the “passback” budget, they haven’t been able to find any trace of a relatively small but highly impactful program that funds state cancer registries.
On April 21, Women’s Health Initiative investigators were informed that HHS would be terminating the WHI Regional Center contracts at the end of the current fiscal year.
At least two medical journals have received letters from the Trump administration accusing them of political bias.
The Association for Clinical Oncology has reached out to the new leaders of federal health agencies to ensure continued progress in cancer care, research, and patient access, the organization said.
The Department of Government Efficiency has started requiring HHS grantees to provide justifications in order to receive payouts for already awarded grant money.
NIH, in a recent notice, prohibits grant recipients from operating programs that promote DEI or “discriminatory equity ideology,” or engage in “discriminatory prohibited boycott.”
