Paul Goldberg is the editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter. He joined the publication in 1986.
His coverage has had a profound impact on the field of oncology, leading to numerous Congressional investigations, and helped change policy, regulation, and standards of care.
Paul’s reporting has been recognized by the Washington DC Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the Gerald Loeb Awards, the Association of Health Care Journalists, and the Newsletter and Electronic Publishers Foundation.
His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The Washington Monthly, and he has been featured on 60 Minutes, 20/20, CNN and NPR. He is also a novelist and author of nonfiction books.
His author website is www.paulgoldberg.com.
Paul graduated from Duke University with a B.A. in economics in 1981.
His coverage has had a profound impact on the field of oncology, leading to numerous Congressional investigations, and helped change policy, regulation, and standards of care.
Paul’s reporting has been recognized by the Washington DC Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the Gerald Loeb Awards, the Association of Health Care Journalists, and the Newsletter and Electronic Publishers Foundation.
His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The Washington Monthly, and he has been featured on 60 Minutes, 20/20, CNN and NPR. He is also a novelist and author of nonfiction books.
His author website is www.paulgoldberg.com.
Paul graduated from Duke University with a B.A. in economics in 1981.
Books
The Yid
(Picador, Macmillan Publishers, 2016)
How We Do Harm: A Doctor Break Ranks About Being Sick in America
with Otis W. Brawley, (St. Martin’s Press, 2012)
The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the Post-Stalin Era
(Little, Brown, 1990; and in paperback, University of Pittsburgh Press) with Ludmilla Alexeyeva
To Live Like Everyone
translation of a memoir of Anatoly Marchenko (Henry Holt, 1989)
The Final Act
(William Morrow, 1988)
Latest Stories
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
FDA officials said the questions about accelerated approval of PD-1 and PD-L1 drugs have been largely resolved, thanks in part to guidance from the Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee.
Obituary
Joseph R. Bertino, a physician who made fundamental discoveries in cancer biology, defined curative cancer treatment regimens, trained generations of influential cancer researchers, ran productive laboratories, and served as the inaugural director of Yale Cancer Center, died on Oct. 10. He was 91.
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An argument can be made that only a government research agency like NCI has the capacity to answer questions about monitoring pancreatic cysts—and how some of them turn malignant.
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Prevention and early detection trials have been especially vulnerable to being disrupted by the COVID-19 lockdown, and a comparison of two regimens for monitoring pancreatic cysts—EA2185—was more vulnerable than most.
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Prevention and early detection studies frequently require engaging physicians from specialties other than oncologists, said Peter O’Dwyer and Mitchell Schnall, co-chairs of ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
Randall F. Holcombe has a goal: earn the NCI designation for University of Vermont Cancer Center. Or, to be precise, earn back the NCI designation.
On Dec. 8, 2020, a month after losing the election, then-president Donald Trump announced his intent to name 26 people to advisory boards across the federal government. Among them were three would-be members of the National Cancer Advisory Board, and in the months following, these three appointments—which have been blocked and ultimately terminated by the...
John A. Ellerton, the principal investigator of the Nevada Cancer Research Foundation NCI Community Oncology Research Program, has won the 2021 Harry Hynes Award. The award is given annually to NCORP PIs for outstanding contribution to clinical trials and community research. In 1983, Ellerton’s group, then called the Southern Nevada Research Foundation, was among the...
Obituary
Franco Muggia, a drug developer and former director of NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, died unexpectedly on Sept. 8.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
NCI has renewed the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center’s comprehensive designation.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
On Aug. 5, two months into her job as CEO of the American Cancer Society, Karen Knudsen was in Burlington, VT, checking out the Hope Lodge—the third one she visited since taking the job.
A Texas law that bans all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy—and a Supreme Court order that allows the state law to take effect—is having an impact on cancer research in the state.
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A Congressional letter is asking NIH to describe the procedures employed for rooting out sexual misconduct committed by advisors.
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First published in 1977, Cancer Crusade: The Story of the National Cancer Act of 1971, is a dispassionate legislative history—a book you can trust.
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Consortium cancer centers have been around for 50 years—since the signing of the National Cancer Act of 1971.
Two decades ago, when Fred Hutch, the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s formed a consortium, they created the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance to serve as a hub of clinical operations.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
Twenty years ago, when Fred Hutch, the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s created a united cancer program in Seattle, they relied on an entity called Seattle Cancer Care Alliance to deliver the consortium’s clinical services.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
It’s safe to say that July 1 was a better than average day for Suresh S. Ramalingam.
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On a June day in 2002, Roy Jensen, a pathologist at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, was back home in the Kansas City environs, taking his young sons to basketball camp in Lawrence.
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The FDA Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee, in an 13-4 vote, recommended against approval of retifanlimab, a PD-1 inhibitor, for the treatment of squamous carcinoma of the anal canal.
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The Cancer Letter received eight 2021 Dateline Awards from the Washington, D.C. Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists—five for journalism, and three for illustration.
FDA officials said drug sponsors will soon be required to conduct randomized studies to determine optimal dosages of cancer drugs before proceeding to testing safety and efficacy in pivotal trials.
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Inappropriate sexual relationships of the sort Axel Grothey engaged in at Mayo Clinic may be all too common.
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The aftermath of sexual misconduct at premier medical institutions rarely leaves visible traces: HR is brought in, confidentiality invoked, deals made. The case of Axel Grothey’s exit from Mayo Clinic is a notable exception.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
Cheryl Willman was named executive director of Mayo Clinic Cancer Programs and director of Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her transition to Mayo will occur sometime in August, officials said.
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In recent weeks, the privately held Cancer Treatment Centers of America has sold the assets of its Philadelphia hospital and closed its hospital in Tulsa.
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“A document in perspective” is a new feature of the Cancer History Project.The objective is to take a noteworthy document—be it prescient or naive—and illuminate it by placing it in proper historical and scientific context.
This was not your ordinary ODAC, but a three-day checkpoint inhibitor marathon that consumed April 27, 28, and 29. You might call it six ODACs for the price of one: subtle as all get-out, if-you-blink-you-miss-it head-spinner of a shindig.
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In a three-day meeting this week, the FDA Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee will be asked to determine viability of six indications for drugs that target PD-/PD-L1 proteins.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
The boundary between basic science and engineering has been the subject of animated discussions in cancer research for quite some time. Where does science end and engineering begin? Is that boundary porous? How does it shift over time?
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An award-winning investigative documentary film about power morcellation—a once-popular “minimally invasive” surgical procedure—is now available on major streaming platforms.
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Karen E. Knudsen was named CEO of the American Cancer Society and its advocacy affiliate, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
Robert Stone: City of Hope aims to transform cancer care nationally through new models, partnerships
City of Hope has received a $50 million gift for a 190,000-square-foot outpatient center in Irvine, Calif.As a result of the gift, from Lennar Foundation, an offshoot of a building company, the facility, which is slated to be opened in 2022, will be named Lennar Foundation Cancer Center at City of Hope Orange County.
Health Disparities
We are shocked and horrified by the recent spate of violence and hate crimes against people of Asian and Pacific Islander descent across the United States.In response to these events, The Cancer Letter is stepping up coverage of inequities and disparities—and we are seeking your help and guidance on an upcoming series of investigative stories.As a publication that actively advocates for racial justice and health equity, we condemn these attacks, which have led to deaths, severe injuries, and widespread fear in AAPI communities.
Obituary
José Baselga, an expert in the development of molecular targeted agents and an executive at AstraZeneca, died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob, an extremely rare, rapidly progressing, degenerative brain disorder.
Free
In 1995, a group of doctors who advocated treating breast cancer with high dose chemotherapy with bone marrow transplantation made an attempt to include that highly toxic procedure in the guidelines of the nascent National Comprehensive Cancer Network.
An ad hoc group formed by NCI to provide advice on the slowly-accruing TMIST—Tomosynthesis Mammographic Imaging Screening Trial—recommended that the trial be streamlined, but should continue.
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Late in 1997, when Bruce Ross told me that Bill McGivney would replace him as CEO of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, I thought the recruitment made sense.
FDA will hold a three-day meeting of the Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee April 27-29 to consider five indications that received accelerated approvals, but that have not been shown to produce a clinical benefit in confirmatory trials.
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The National Comprehensive Cancer Network, an organization that promulgates guidelines based on standards of care provided at academic institutions in the U.S., is indisputably one of the pillars of oncology today.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
Last year, Fox Chase Cancer Center stood poised to make history by becoming the first NCI-designated cancer center to be sold on open market.
Three companies withdraw cancer indications for PD-1/PD-L1 drugs in FDA’s “industry-wide evaluation”
Over the past three months, three pharmaceutical companies voluntarily withdrew three cancer indications for drugs that had previously received accelerated approvals from FDA, but ultimately failed to meet agreed-upon endpoints in confirmatory trials required for regular approvals.
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A quarter century ago, on March 3, 1996, in Ft. Lauderdale, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network held a conference—its first.
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Five academic cancer centers have formed a unique research alliance, Break Through Cancer, to focus on four cancer types—pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer, glioblastoma, and acute myelogenous leukemia.
In a unanimous vote, the FDA Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee recommended against an accelerated approval for Keytruda for patients with high-risk, early-stage triple-negative breast cancer, in combination with chemotherapy as neoadjuvant treatment, then as a single agent as adjuvant treatment after surgery.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
Being Black and running an NCI-designated cancer center at a time of a worldwide pandemic, an ugly election, and a racial reckoning in a Southern town puts you in a position to make profound observations.
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Twenty-five years ago, The Cancer Letter missed a big story.
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J enjoyed explaining that the letter J in his name appeared in his birth certificate.
Obituary
In a succession of high-powered day jobs, Joseph V. Simone shaped modern oncology. Then, presumably at night, Joe did a little writing. “Simone's Maxims” is his chef-d'œuvre.
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In his previous job, in North Carolina, Edward S. Kim helped build a cancer program where there was none.
Walter J. (Wally) Curran, Jr., has stepped down from his positions as NRG Oncology presiding group chair and as one of the three principal investigators of the NRG Oncology.
On Jan. 20, as required, Ned Sharpless submitted his resignation letter to the outgoing administration. Other Trump appointees did the same.
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In histories of oncology, Charles Gordon Zubrod is a name that flashes by quickly, someone who did something important a long time ago.
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Mace Rothenberg has stepped down as chief medical officer at Pfizer. His successor is Aida Habtezion, a Stanford researcher whose work is focused on leukocyte recruitment and immune responses in diseases affecting the digestive organs.
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Historical documents have a way of vanishing. Manuscripts, letters, and photographs end up in city dumps. Memories become less granular, insight is lost. The documents that do get preserved often require a trip to the archives.
Pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry groups, joined by cancer groups, filed legal challenges to an HHS rule that uses international reference prices to lower Medicare Part B prices.
On the way out, the Trump administration has finalized a rule that uses international reference prices to lower Medicare Part B prices.
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Julie R. Gralow, an expert in breast cancer, clinical trials and global health, was named chief medical officer of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
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As he watches COVID-19 numbers climb in New Jersey, Steven K. Libutti reviews all the things he had learned last spring, when the pandemic first slammed the state.
Obituary
A cancer pioneer, Helene G. Brown had coined the name for her peculiar subspecialty: political oncology.
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Earlier this year, as doctors observed that patients afflicted with the novel coronavirus were dying from a cytokine release syndrome, some suggested focusing on suppressing production of interleukin-6 to control this immune response gone haywire.
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On Jan. 6, Barry P. Sleckman’s started his job as director of the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
NCI's cancer screening trials may be falling victim to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
NCI's publicly announced move to create an ad hoc working group that would review the feasibility and viability of the TMIST trial threatens to undercut this trial, said Mitchell Schnall, co-chair of ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group, the group conducting the study.
Budget increases in 2020 enabled NCI to boost funding for research project grants, pushing the payline up by two percentage points from last year's level.
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Gary Reedy announced that he will retire from his job as CEO of the American Cancer Society when his contract expires next April.
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In 1971, when the National Cancer Act was signed, Walter Lawrence, Jr., was one of the surgeons eager for a push forward, driven by rigorous science reviewed and funded by the federal government.
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Raymond N. DuBois was named director of MUSC Hollings Cancer Center effective Aug. 17.
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Stephen Nimer: Cancer patients are coming in for treatment, Florida's COVID-19 spike notwithstanding
“Our chemotherapy and radiation therapy volumes have been very robust. Probably because of the NCI designation, we are seeing significantly more patients than last year,” Stephen D. Nimer, director of Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, said to The Cancer Letter. “Compared to last year, we seem to be up about 15%. We’ve been growing by about 8% to 9% for quite some years. This year is even more.”
In the afternoon of July 22, the American Cancer Society instructed the staff of its National Home Office to pick up their belongings and equipment before July 30.
The FDA Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee July 14 voted 12-0 to recommend approval for belantamab mafodotin for relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma.
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As cases of COVID-19 surge in Florida, Lucio Gordan, managing physician and president of Florida Cancer Specialists and Research Institute, is working to increase the role of telehealth.
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Last time Ruben Mesa spoke with The Cancer Letter, COVID-19 was under control in San Antonio and the environs—or so it seemed.
COVID-19 & Cancer
A House subcommittee July 7 marked up a spending bill that proposes a $5.275 billion increase for NIH.
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Any way you look at it, Northwell Health, New York’s largest health system, took a massive hit from COVID-19.
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The American Cancer Society has raised $160 million so far this year, an astonishingly low number for an organization that historically has booked about half of its funds from walks, runs, and relays that take place in the spring and early summer.
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If you look at attendance, COVID-19 didn’t derail ASCO20.
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It is not a matter of editorial opinion to say these words: Black Lives Matter.
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The first COVID-19 patient walked into a Mount Sinai ER on March 1.
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Programs designed to meet the NCI Community Outreach and Engagement requirements for cancer center designation have positioned the University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center to monitor the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in South Florida.
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The NCI Board of Scientific Advisors has approved concepts for an RFA and an RFP to support research in serological testing.
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Nancy Davidson is now in the eleventh week of managing the COVID-19 pandemic—the longest stretch experienced by any health executive in the U.S.
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NCI has received additional $306 million under a COVID-19 aid package “to develop, validate, improve, and implement serological testing and associated technologies applicable to COVID-19.”
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The deal is off: Fox Chase Cancer Center will not be sold to Thomas Jefferson University.
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Early data from two randomized phase III studies of the antiviral drug remdesivir make it a viable treatment for COVID-19.
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The COVID-19 pandemic will change the structure and economics of clinical care and clinical trials in cancer, said Howard “Skip” Burris, president of clinical operations and chief medical officer of Sarah Cannon, the Cancer Institute of HCA Healthcare.
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News coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York has lent urgency to social distancing efforts in San Antonio and South Texas, likely flattening the curve.
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How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected oncology?
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As he manages the logistics of running Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey and cancer services throughout RWJBarnabas Health, Steven K. Libutti has to worry about providing cancer care in a massive health system in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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A class of drugs that has been used to treat adverse events associated with CAR T-cell therapy is emerging as a potential treatment for COVID-19.
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Preparing for a surge in COVID-19 cases this week, the Johns Hopkins health system is relying on the recently-activated Johns Hopkins Medicine Incident Command Center to prioritize the institution’s patient care and research functions and coordinate the opening of testing tents and drive-through testing sites.
The FDA Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee Feb. 26 voted down a vascular-targeted photodynamic therapy for early-stage, low-risk prostate cancer and, in a narrow vote, recommended approval for a combination of a VEGF receptor 2 antagonist and an EGFR-targeting tyrosine kinase inhibitor for front-line treatment of EGFR-positive non-small cell lung cancer.
This story begins our occasional series looking back at the history of oncology since the signing of the National Cancer Act of 1971. The Cancer Letter was founded in 1973.
Explaining his decision to grant clemency to the financier Michael Milken, President Trump spoke thus:
In what appears to be a significant reorganization, Gary Reedy, CEO of the American Cancer Society, announced to the staff of the Atlanta-based charity that he will be stepping away from its day-to-day operations.
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On Feb. 1, Thomas J. Lynch will report to work as president and director of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
Richard Turman was named president on ACT for NIH, a Washington group that has played a key role in increasing federal appropriations for biomedical research over the past six years.
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Consider these data points on cancer disparities:
