On April 8, 2012 thousands of individuals and nearly 200 partnering programs, including representatives from the American Society of Hematology (ASH), American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), and American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) gathered at the Carnegie Library grounds in Washington, D.C. for the Rally for Medical Research. Here medical research supporters sought to raise public awareness over the importance of federally funded medical research. This need has been magnified by the March 1 sequestration mandated cuts to all areas of the federal budget, and a decade long decline in funding for the National Institute of Health (NIH).
As ASH wrote, this decline in money for medical research is not a new development:
“Research supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is in serious jeopardy. NIH’s inflation-adjusted budget today is almost 20 percent lower than it was in FY 2003…Under sequestration, the NIH budget will be cut by an additional $1.6 billion over the remainder of fiscal year (FY) 2013. While the impact of these cuts may not be felt all at once or immediately, the harm caused to bio-medical research will be devastating- progress toward cures for deadly diseases and efforts to prevent costly chronic conditions will be slowed…”
Besides these budgetary concerns, ASCO President Sandra M. Swain noted the human cost of such budget cuts, stressing the impressive strides made in cancer research due to federal funding:
“As a direct result of the federal investment in cancer research, we understand more about cancers than at any point in human history. This understanding of cancer at the molecular level has created unprecedented opportunities to slow the growth of cancer diseases. As a country, we can be proud that two of three people in the U.S. with cancer live at least 5 years after their diagnosis. This is up from one of two in the 1970s before the passage of the National Cancer Act. Since the 1990s, the nation’s cancer death rate has dropped 18 percent, reversing decades of increases. More than 13 million people in the U.S. are cancer survivors.”
Considering these new fiscal realities, the researchers and clinicians in the Lymphoma Program at Weill Cornell Medical College are adjusting accordingly. They will continue to do all that they can to deliver the latest in ground breaking research and clinical care.
Click here to use the ASH advocacy tool to contact your Representative and Senators about protecting medical research. Contact information for individual Representatives and Senators can be found here and here.
New Developments in Lymphoma 