Below is an excerpt from an interview with Vincent T. DeVita, Jr., NCI Director from July 9, 1980 to Sept. 1, 1988. The interview was conducted on June 5, 1997, by Gretchen A. Case as part of the NCI Oral History Project.
Vincent T. DeVita, Jr.: I didn’t like the Cancer Act at all when it was passed, like most people at the NIH. We all thought it was crazy to do this, leave us alone, let us do our research, and don’t do anything, and so forth. And then subsequently I became the Director of the Cancer Program and I ran it, so it was kind of ironic that I had the hook-up in 1970, and then I became the Director of the Cancer Program ten years later; kind of interesting.
Money does not buy ideas. That was the standard thought. You can’t just pour money into something. Well, of course, that turns out to be totally wrong: money does buy ideas.
Vincent T. DeVita, Jr.
Well, we didn’t like being told by politicians what we should do, and the idea was that you didn’t buy ideas with money—money does not buy ideas. That was the standard thought. You can’t just pour money into something.
Well, of course, that turns out to be totally wrong: money does buy ideas. And what money did with the Cancer Program, what it does whenever you put money into a program, is it attracts brilliant scientists who come into the field, they set their laboratories up, and they generate ideas.
You can’t go out to somebody and say, “Here’s a million dollars, give me an idea.” But if you put that person to work, they generate ideas, those ideas generate new information, progress, and so forth. So I think the standard academic response was frankly the standard academic response to a lot of things, that no, we’re too above the fray to let this happen.
[…] When the Cancer Act came along, we were saying, well, you know, we’re going to be told by politicians how we’re going to do our science, and we know you can’t buy ideas with money and so forth, and then gradually everybody came around. I think Frei and Freireich and myself and Zubrod all ultimately bought into it.
But in the beginning, I can remember the reaction to it. It was standard at the NIH to be against it. The NIH Director was against it. And anybody up the line from the NIH was against it. Nobody wanted it. Mary Lasker, almost single-handedly, pushed this thing through. And she’s a really great lady, and she really should get the credit.
Read the full interview: NCI Oral History Project Interview with Vincent T. DeVita, Jr., M.D
By NCI | March 11, 2021
Recent contributions
Joseph R. Bertino: 50 Years of Cancer Research, A “Golden” Opportunity
By Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey | April 21, 2021
A Blueprint for Breast Cancer Deadline 2020
By National Breast Cancer Coalition | April 20, 2021
SWOG: Public Powered Cancer Research Since 1956
By SWOG | April 20, 2021
Primary sources
The National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship has provided the Cancer History Project with a rich archive of its newsletters: the NCCS Networker, volumes 1-11. Visit the full archive.
This column features the latest posts to the Cancer History Project by our growing list of contributors.
The Cancer History Project is a free, web-based, collaborative resource intended to mark the 50th anniversary of the National Cancer Act and designed to continue in perpetuity. The objective is to assemble a robust collection of historical documents and make them freely available.
Access to the Cancer History Project is open to the public at CancerHistoryProject.com. You can also follow us on Twitter at @CancerHistProj.
Is your institution a contributor to the Cancer History Project? Eligible institutions include cancer centers, advocacy groups, professional societies, pharmaceutical companies, and key organizations in oncology.
To apply to become a contributor, please contact admin@cancerhistoryproject.com.
