Why the War on Cancer Failed

Abstract

In 1971, President Nixon launched the “war on cancer” with great fanfare. The dramatic increase in spending on targeted cancer research was supposed to quickly yield new treatments. That did not happen. The cancer establishment, which profits from the $200 billion spent annually on cancer treatment, has never provided an adequate accounting of how more spending translates into lives saved. In fact, by the mid-1980s, it became apparent that most of the “progress” in the war on cancer was little more than statistical sleight of hand. The death rate from cancer had climbed, not declined. Eventually, cancer deaths began to fall, but little of that improvement was due to better treatment. It was mostly a result of campaigns to reduce smoking and to promote early detection of treatable cancers. One reason the progress of treatment stalled was the unwillingness to consider unconventional treatments that were developed by doctors and other healers. Practitioners of unapproved treatments often sought refuge in Mexico from the medical apartheid system in the United States.