Drawing on Charles Dickens, NCI Acting Director Douglas Lowy has a teaching moment for oncology: we live in the best of times as well as the worst of times, because only fragments of human society—both in the United States and in low- and middle-income countries—fully benefit from modern cancer care.
At a lecture at Yale Cancer Center recently, Robert A. Winn brandished a copy of a 32-year old booklet titled “Cancer at a Crossroads: A Report to Congress for the Nation,” using it as a show-and-tell prop in arguing that America’s cancer program is once again at a crossroads and therefore in urgent need of strategic thinking (The Cancer Letter, April 10, 2026).
