Recent contributors: Duke, Sarah Cannon, and the UA Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society

This pictorial features six images from the new online exhibition, “Covering Cancer?” created by The Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society.

Dec. 22, 2021, marked the 50th anniversary of President Richard M. Nixon’s signing of the National Cancer Act, which became known as the start of the “War on Cancer.” In 2016 as Vice President and again this year President Joe Biden updated the War on Cancer by launching the “Cancer Moonshot”–-a reference to the 1969 Apollo 11 mission that landed a man on the moon eight years after President John F. Kennedy called on Congress to fund this program. 

Remarkable, even miraculous, advances have been made in cancer diagnosis and treatment since the 1970s, even as a universal cure for the more than 100 kinds of cancer remains elusive. Yet, it has been known for decades that fully a third of cancers are entirely preventable by not smoking cigarettes. 

Communicating and reinforcing this simple fact in the mass media was made far more difficult by the tobacco industry, one of the biggest advertisers in magazines and newspapers, as well as on radio, TV, and billboards. 

The print medium was arguably the most trusted form of communication. The combined circulation of the major three newsweeklies—TIME, Newsweek, and US News & World Report—exceeded 8 million from the 1960s to the 1990s. 

Cigarette advertisements featured prominently in most issues of these magazines, often resulting in ironic juxtapositions of front cover stories on cancer and back cover advertisements for cigarettes.

Sarah Cannon was the real name of the television and radio personality, Minnie Pearl. Sarah Cannon received treatment for breast cancer at the founding center in Nashville. Afterwards, she offered the use of her name to promote cancer research and patient education with a vision of offering patients convenient access to early detection, clinical trials and a team approach to cancer care.

Since its inception in 1993, Sarah Cannon has taken many first steps in the fight against cancer, beginning with clinical research. With the focus of offering patients greater access to clinical trials at the earliest phases, Sarah Cannon’s founders established the first community-based cancer research program and, four years later, formed the first drug development program outside of an academic setting.

William Warner Shingleton, MD, a distinguished surgeon and the founding director of the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center, died in Chapel Hill, NC, Jan. 2, 2005. He was 88.

Shingleton was instrumental in developing and expanding the burgeoning cancer center at Duke into a nationally recognized program. He was one of the signers of the 1971 National Cancer Act, legislation passed by Congress which appropriated federal funds to build 15 cancer centers nationwide.

The Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center was among these original centers and was established in 1972. The first building was constructed with a $5.6 million grant from the National Cancer Institute in 1972, and by 1977 the Duke center had achieved the highest national standing when the National Cancer Advisory Board rated it first among the nation’s comprehensive cancer centers, ahead of Memorial Sloan Kettering and Sidney (now Dana-Farber Cancer Institute), the Mayo Clinic and Yale.

Under Shingleton’s direction, the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center saw tremendous growth in the number of investigators, from 50 physicians and scientists to more than 200, as well as dramatic expansion in clinical and laboratory space and in research accomplishments.

On June 28, 2019, Joseph Odell Moore, MD, celebrated his 75th birthday. On June 30, the Duke Cancer Institute hematologic oncologist, after 44 years, retired from clinical practice.

“At the end of June, I took a deep breath. I was exhausted,” smiled Moore. “Totally exhausted. And I said to myself, “I’m doing the right thing.””

In early August, Moore had an ablation to treat atrial fibrillation. It went well and the prognosis is good. A couple weeks later, the distinguished professor of Medicine was back at his office on a two-day-a-week schedule slowly getting things in order for the final year of his research career.