Just Cure Cancer

For decades, researchers toiled away to find cures for cancers.  And doctors on the front-lines of cancer treatment succeeded in eliminating cancer from many patients. However, there is still a long way to travel to find the cure for cancer. Last night, the POTUS Obama during his State of the Union address, tasked the job of ending cancer once and for all to his Vice President, Joe Biden. He set him to lead a new effort to just cure cancer for good.

While curing cancer is a worthwhile goal and certainly needed, it leaves out many key points and appears to be more political posturing. For one thing, it completely minimizes the researchers who are laboring away, trying new ideas, putting science to trial in order to discover the ultimate cure. It also neglects the doctors on the front-lines who fight every day for the lives of patients. To suggest a lone politician can just care cancer neglects the role all these others are doing. Thinking a politician can achieve what scientists and doctors cannot is rather trite.

And being on the front-lines of medicine in the 21st century, we must know that we are not just seeking a “cure for cancer”.  We need ways to prevent cancers, such as we achieved with cervical cancer and the Human Papilloma Vaccine. It is imperative that we learn the genomics of cancers and look for new modalities of treatment such as nanotechnology and genetic treatments.To just say we need a cure for cancer is short-sighted.

Yes, we need the government to fund research and clinical studies. But, those should be based on science and medicine. They should not be done to serve political agendas or booster politicians. Millions of lives are at stake here and the cost too high to make it a political game.

In order to stamp out cancer, we need everyone on the same board. We need scientists to innovate the therapies until we find the ones that work. We need them to run clinical trials to establish the safety and efficacy of these therapies. We need the providers: doctors and nurses and all those who play a role in patient care to use these therapies and report any adverse outcomes. We need to be diligent in the statistics that we report. And we need the government to sponsor the research and the trials. It should not be a power play of who will “cure cancer”. We are all needed.

All too often these days, it seems the government is trying to take over the exam room. Doctors on the front-lines must comply with increasing mandates:  Meaningful Use, PQRS, the HITECH Act, the ACA, the Macra bill. All these mandates impose on the care we provide to patients. And it is not necessarily in a good way. Rather, it takes time directly from patients in order to obey these rules that many doctors find useless. No one thought to ask us.  Hopefully, the new cancer czar will not result in more enforced guidelines to implement at the sacrifice of our patients.

I hold out hope that we are near a time when we can cure all cancers. I diagnose new cases every week. I see the very real human suffering that results. I truly wish that Joe Biden can lead the force of change but I hold my breath because politicians can’t even solve bipartisan tensions. How could they possibly cure cancer?  In an ideal world, we can marry the scientists and doctors and politicians to work for the cure. Who wants to cast aside the political aspirations and strive for an end to cancer suffering?

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