Word: problem
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...chemotherapy. You stare blankly across the room at the others staring blankly back, everyone silently asking the question: Am I going to make it? When you're facing that kind of primal question, you say to yourself, "Well, at least I'm not alone." And that is precisely the problem...
...number of cancer activists, researchers and patients, there is too much death and too much waiting for new drugs and therapies. They want a greater sense of urgency, a new approach that emphasizes translational research over basic research--turning knowledge into therapies and getting them to patients pronto. The problem is, that's not the way our sclerotic research paradigm--principally administered by the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute (NIH/NCI)--is set up. "The fact that we jump up and down when cancer deaths go from 562,000 to 561,000, that's ridiculous. That...
...other funds, researchers identified a gene defect that correlates smoking and bladder cancer. "If you have that defect and you smoke, there's a 100% chance you'll get cancer," says DuBois. But the hospital is more likely to get support for work on lung cancer, a much bigger problem. So call it research triage...
Even with a new President inclined to increase spending, throwing money at the problem isn't the answer. "There is no strategic plan," says former Senator Bill Frist, a heart and lung surgeon before he entered politics. Frist voted to double NIH funds in 1998 but wouldn't recommend it again without a better road map. There are numerous federal agencies that cover cancer, for instance, and less than complete coordination among them...
...strategy is often compared to that of the Manhattan Project, which produced the first atom bomb, or the Apollo program, which put astronauts on the moon. Some worry that it oversimplifies things. "This isn't an engineering problem," says the NIH's Harris. "It's a problem in which we know only parts of the solution...