Mercy Cancer Services
A Message from the
Medical Director
The Last Word on Cancer
In his 1971 State of the Union address, President
Nixon declared his now-famous War on Cancer with these words: “The time
has come in America when the same type of concentrated effort that split
the atom and took man to the moon should be turned toward conquering
this dread disease.” Decades later, the question is: “Who’s winning this
war?”
More than 1.2 million Americans develop cancer each
year, along with 11 million worldwide. In the U.S., cancer remains the
second leading cause of death after heart disease. The public is
frustrated that, after billions have been poured into cancer research,
this group of diseases seems as strong as ever.
In fact, the battlefront has been pushed back slowly
since the early 1990s when the overall mortality rate from cancer began
to decline. However, we have a long way to go in a wide variety of
cancer types.
Many of the developments in cancer research that are
headline-grabbers have more to do with reducing side effects and making
cancer treatment more comfortable. Advances in surgery and radiation
therapy are almost always in this category, not impacting cure rates
beyond what is achieved already through tumor removal or destruction,
but clearly taking the edge off treatment and improving quality of life.
But to continue the “war” analogy, in order to
defeat the enemy, cancer research must address:
1) earlier and more
reliable detection, 2) better prediction tied to prevention, and 3)
improved systemic therapies. (And there is a sense of urgency here…in
the time it has taken you to read the first half of this letter, 10
people have been diagnosed with cancer, and by the time you finish,
another 10 will have been diagnosed.) It’s difficult to recognize a
revolution in medical science when you’re smack dab in the middle of it,
but I think history will record our current times as such.
With regard to #1, earlier and more reliable
detection, body imaging through MRI, CT, and PET scanning is already
beyond science fiction, and we take it for granted that physicians can
find pea-sized tumors anywhere in the body. The problem is that since
these tiny tumors usually have no symptoms, we need some sort of “alert”
that tells us to look harder through our expensive imaging techniques.
Blood testing could serve as this “alert,” helping to screen for cancer.
Over the next decade, look for research to expand blood testing far
beyond its current limited use in just a few cancer types.
With regard
to #2, better prediction tied to prevention, genetic testing is already
making an impact such that we can reliably predict cancer long before it
happens (in a select minority, so far) and then perform a variety of
interventions to prevent it from occurring, or to detect it earlier.
As
for #3, improved systemic therapies, the number of biotherapies is
exploding to such a degree that oncologists now have an arsenal at their
disposal. And just around the corner, it appears that the immune system
is finally giving up its secrets, allowing us to harness its potential
in fighting cancer with “vaccines.” So while the “causes” and “cures” of
most cancers remain elusive, it is a realistic goal to control the
disease, perhaps converting it to a chronic nuisance rather than a
killer.
From our centralized oncology services at Mercy, we
hope to contribute to all aspects of the above, not only improving
outcomes and quality of life for the cancer patients diagnosed today,
but providing the original research and assisting in clinical trials
that will eventuate in the control or eradication of these complex
diseases tomorrow.
Alan B. Hollingsworth
M.D. Medical Director
Mercy
Cancer Services |
