How the Trump Administration Is Dismantling America’s Cancer-Research System

Since President Richard Nixon declared war on cancer more than 50 years ago, America’s cancer-research system has been a triumph of government-funded science. Although some 40 percent of Americans will still get a cancer diagnosis at some point in their life, this sprawling research system — which reaches into universities all across the country — has yielded decades of minor breakthroughs that has saved millions of lives and improve the quality of life for those undergoing cancer treatments.

Today, with the benefits of decades of accrued knowledge and new advances in technology, cancer researchers are on the brink of further breakthroughs that could enable doctors to detect possible tumors earlier and treat them more effectively and with fewer short- and long-term side effects. But the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to American cancer research are putting the entire system — and with it, future progress — in jeopardy.

For my magazine article, I spoke to 50 members of America’s biomedical-research establishment — medical-school administrators; government-funded researchers; former directors and current and former program officers and officials at the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute.

Here are the key takeaways from the full article.

America is in the midst of one of its most productive periods in cancer-research history.

The benefits of America’s sustained investment in cancer research are borne out by striking statistics: In the mid-1970s, America’s five-year cancer survival rate sat at 49 percent; today, it is 68 percent. Every $326 that the government invests in cancer research extends a human life by one year. And there are potentially transformative research projects happening all across the country right now, like cancer vaccines and a “flash” radiation treatment that lasts just a few tenths of a second and causes much less damage to the surrounding tissue.

The Trump administration is actively dismantling the cancer-research system.

New presidential administrations have usually gone out of their way to make transitions at the National Institutes of Health as seamless as possible so as not to disrupt ongoing research. The Trump administration, in sharp contrast, has canceled hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of cancer-related research grants and contracts and suspended or delayed payments for hundreds of millions more — largely for political reasons.

It is also seeking to cut the N.C.I.’s budget by more than a third, and to sharply lower the percentage of overhead expenses that the government will cover for federally funded research labs.