The President’s Cancer Panel: 50 years of charting policy

“One of our greatest concerns is the risk of inordinately high expectations on the part of the Congress and the public,” Schmidt, inaugural chairman of the panel, wrote in a 1973 report addressed to President Richard Nixon. “We must not think of this program as comparable to a moon shot or an atom bomb program. It cannot be regarded as a crash program for the accelerated implementation of known basic science.

“Instead, this is a program in basic science matched with the endeavor to bring the best of today’s science to the cancer patient. We are not in search of a magic bullet, but rather are attempting to mobilize the best brains available in this nation and the world to insure that they have an opportunity to make their maximum contribution to the cause of solving the cancer problem and of minimizing the time required for the solutions to benefit the cancer patient.

“We are not in search of a magic bullet, but rather are attempting to mobilize the best brains available in this nation and the world to insure that they have an opportunity to make their maximum contribution to the cause of solving the cancer problem and of minimizing the time required for the solutions to benefit the cancer patient.” 

Schmidt, a fundamental architect of the National Cancer Program, helped NCI secure its first substantial appropriation: $100 million in 1972. 

Two years later, in 1974, the panel met with then-President Richard Nixon and convinced him to support legislation to create the National Research Service Awards for training biomedical scientists (The Cancer Letter, Oct. 29, 1999). 

At the time of the report, the President’s Cancer Panel also included surgeon R . Lee Clark, director and surgeon-in-chief at The University of Texas MD Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute, and Robert A. Good, president and director of Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research. 

Schmidt was a managing partner of  J. H. Whitney & Company in New York. 

While biomedical research was “a notoriously uncertain enterprise,” the president said, there would be no uncertainty about the government’s role in the cancer effort. “I am determined,” Mr. Nixon continued, “that the Federal will and Federal resources will be committed as effectively as possible to the campaign against cancer and that nothing will be allowed to compromise that commitment.” 

The president had great confidence in that pledge, he said, because immediately prior to the ceremony he had asked Benno Schmidt to serve on the President’s Cancer Panel for the three year term and to be chairman in its first year. 

Schmidt, the president announced, had accepted this invitation. Mr. Nixon described Schmidt as “an effective leader of men and a dedicated community servant,” and expressed the view that the nation was fortunate to have such an individual “heading this important panel in its critical first year.” 

The president then gave Benno Schmidt the pen with which he signed his first name. It was a great moment of personal recognition for the chairman of the Panel of Consultants. 

Richard Nixon wrapped himself in the mantle of leadership in the nation’s new commitment to an attack on cancer. He reminded his audience that he had asked for such a program in his January State of the Union Message and his health message of February, and that he had submitted very specific proposals for a cancer cure program in May. 

Beyond this, the Congress had appropriated the additional $100 million for cancer research he had requested, which brought the fiscal 1972 appropriations for NCI to $337.5 million. In addition, the president noted, he had announced the conversion that October of the biological warfare activities of Fort Detrick, Maryland, into a leading center for cancer research. 

The president noted that the new act allowed him to appoint the director of NCI, and provided that the NCI budget be submitted directly to him. It also provided the three-member President’s Cancer Panel and a new National Cancer Advisory Board, which bodies, made up of presidential appointees, reported directly to him. 

“The important result of all these provisions,” Mr. Nixon said, “is to place the full weight of the Presidency behind the National Cancer Program” and to enable him “to take personal command of the Federal effort to conquer cancer so its activities need not be stymied by the familiar dangers of bureaucracy and red tape.” 

“Having asked for this authority—and this responsibility,” he said, impressing the presidential seal even more firmly on the cancer program, “I now pledge to exercise it to the fullest.”

I am determined that the Federal will and Federal resources will be committed as effectively as possible to the campaign against cancer and that nothing will be allowed to compromise that commitment. 

I make this statement with even greater confidence knowing that Benno C. Schmidt has accepted my invitation to become the first Chairman of the President’s Cancer Panel. As Chairman of the National Panel of Consultants on the Conquest of Cancer, Mr. Schmidt has played an active role in the development and enactment of the National Cancer Act. He is an effective leader of men and a dedicated community servant. The Nation is fortunate that he will be heading this important panel in its critical first year. 

Even as the plans for our National Cancer Program were being completed in the past few months, other developments have continued to fuel our hopes for further substantial progress in discovering the causes and cures of cancer. Scientists in all parts of the world have continued to contribute important new findings to the growing pool of knowledge about this disease.

There continues to be every reason for believing that cancer research, of all of our research endeavors, may be in the best position to benefit from a new application of human and financial resources. 

Benno Schmidt, 86, a pioneering venture capitalist and one of the architects of the National Cancer Program, died of heart failure Oct. 21.

As a member of the National Panel of Consultants established in 1970 by Sen. Ralph Yarborough, Schmidt helped shape the National Cancer Act of 1971. On the panel, Schmidt advocated giving the cancer program a unique, high-priority status within the government-financed biomedical research enterprise.

After the passage of the Act, Schmidt was named chairman of the President’s Cancer Panel. In that role, he helped NCI secure its first substantial appropriation: $100 million in 1972. Two years later, in 1974, the panel met with then-President Richard Nixon and convinced him to support legislation to create the National Research Service Awards for training biomedical scientists.

By the end of 1970, we had drafted a proposed National Cancer Act and Yarborough had introduced it in the Senate. Thereupon, he went back to Texas for the 1970 election and was defeated by Lloyd Bentsen. 

With the organization of the new Congress in 1971, Ted Kennedy became Chairman of the Health Subcommittee and it was his prerogative to reappoint the Panel and its Chairman. 

He asked me if I would be willing to continue in the chairmanship and I agreed to do so. The National Cancer Act was reintroduced, this time as the Kennedy-Javits Bill. 

The year 1971 was taken up with the Senate and House hearings and other activities necessary to obtain the passage of the Act and its signing on December 23 of that year. This involved some very interesting times. 

I had taken the chairmanship of the Yarborough Panel in the naive assumption and belief that I would be involved in little, if any, controversy. 

Obviously, everyone would want to do everything possible to improve our progress in cancer, as well as in other areas of biomedical research, so what could possibly be controversial about a sincere and thoughtful attempt to enhance the effectiveness of our programs? My, oh, my.