The National Cancer Act pioneers: The Roswell Park hearings and VCU Massey’s Walter Lawrence

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Edmund Klein, Roswell Park; Rep. James R. Hastings, Western New York; and Rep. Paul G. Rogers, chairman of the subcommittee at the hearing at Roswell Park Memorial Institute, to pass the National Cancer Act of 1971. Hearings were held Oct. 11, 1971.

Leaders of Roswell Park Comprehensive center played important roles in lobbying for the National Cancer Act—so much so that the National Cancer Act was put into its final form in Buffalo. 

When asked his thoughts on how the funding and research for cancer centers could be improved, the testimony of Roswell Park’s Associate Director, Edwin Mirand, PhD, gave Congress a solution:

“I think a mechanism, which could be established, which would be a large institutional grant in specific categories, could be given to any comprehensive cancer center through a means in which, in some way, a large lump sum could be given to an institute on some formula basis, particularly the comprehensive cancer institutes involved in research, clinical delivery and education,” Dr. Mirand wrote.

“Members of the subcommittee picked that up, and within a week, a version of Dr. Mirand’s language was included in the legislation and used as an appropriate way to allocate funding and became what we now call the ‘Core Grant’ process, that funds NCI designated cancer centers,” says Schwartz.

With the final language now in place, Congress passed the updated National Cancer Act on December 23, 1971. 

Remembering Walter Lawrence

Walter Lawrence, director emeritus of Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center, died Nov. 9 at the age of 96. An obituary by Robert Winn and Gordon Ginder, the current and former directors of VCU Massey, is published here

In August 2020, The Cancer Letter published an interview with Winn and Lawrence, in which Lawrence reflects on the National Cancer Act, social justice, and COVID-19. 

Lawrence: When technology hit surgery, that’s when laparoscopic surgery, robotic surgery, and those things came along.

Of course, those of us who had been doing something another way all along resisted a little bit, but it became clear that there were tremendous advantages.

There had been some disadvantages. Part of the disadvantages is the increase in technology has increased subspecialization, so many of the people treating patients have shifted from being, in a sense, physicians to technologists, and they only do one kind of treatment, and they suddenly lose sight of the disease and all its aspects and focus more on the mechanics of treatment.

But it’s one of those things that goes with the territory. I think that, all in all, the technology of some of these improvements in surgery, for example, have really made this less damaging treatment and one that’s better tolerated, and so it is progress overall, it just has a few of those things that make me worried.

That’s part of the reason I still teach medical students, because I don’t spend time teaching them how to treat cancer now. I teach them how to take care of people. That’s still something that’s very necessary in cancer management, and I’m sure you do that well.

Over the past 20 years since the signing of the National Cancer Act, the largest gains in the “war on cancer” have been in cancer prevention, American Cancer Society President Walter Lawrence told a meeting of science writers last week.

While tremendous gains have been made in treatment of childhood leukemia, other childhood cancers, testicular cancers, and breast cancer, there has been modest progress in treatment results for all sites of cancer, Lawrence said. “Clearly, we are far from being able to declare victory in this campaign. My own view is that our biggest gain in this arena is our increased appreciation of, and focus on, cancer prevention strategies,” Lawrence said.


Quote of the week

One of the things that led me to being interested in cancer was that I thought the operations that we did for cancer were the most interesting operations we did. As a young surgeon, they were thrilling, because they were some of the bigger ones. Of course at the time I entered into this cancer field, which is in the early fifties, I’ll have to admit the only good treatment for most cancers was surgery.

Walter Lawrence, Jr. (The Cancer Letter, Aug. 7, 2020)

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.

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