AACR Cancer Progress Report 2012

At the opening of its Annual Meeting on April 1, 2012, in Chicago, Illinois, leaders from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) declared that the ability of cancer researchers to bring the promise of science to improve the outcomes for cancer patients is in peril due to a decade of declining budgets at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The AACR Board of Directors also announced that it would redouble its efforts to engage with Congress to make cancer research and biomedical science funding a national priority, raise public awareness of the importance of continued investment in cancer research and biomedical science, and call on its 34,000 members and the broader advocacy community constituencies to join together to better explain the value of research to saving lives and to the economic health and well-being of our Nation.The AACR Cancer Progress Report 2012 is one of the major steps toward achieving the goals outlined five months ago by the AACR Board. In addition to detailing how scientific discoveries are transforming the prevention, detection, diagnosis and treatment of cancer and ushering in a new era of personalized medicine where cancer patients are treated based on the molecular profile of their cancer, this Report is a Call to Action for the general public and for policymakers to intensify their efforts to support research. The AACR is deeply grateful to the cancer survivors and their loved ones who selflessly shared in this Report their personal experiences to further our efforts to communicate the importance of research to each and every individual facing cancer.For the past decade the NIH budget has remained essentially flat, and when factoring in the rate of biomedical inflation, the agency has effectively lost more than $6 billion or nearly 20% of its ability to support life-saving research. And as a result of a budget mechanism, called sequestration, which was created by the U.S. Congress in the Budget Control Act of 2011 to force the government to address the federal deficit, on January 2, 2013, funding for every federal program, including the NCI and its parent agency, the NIH, may be forced to absorb another budget cut of 8%.If these cuts are put in place, it will destroy the cancer research and biomedical science enterprise, which is already confronting a situation where the opportunities for researchers to be awarded an NIH grant to uncover new scientific knowledge and make further substantial inroads against cancer have reached an all-time low. In testimony before Congress, NIH Director Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., described sequestration's impact on NIH as potentially “devastating,” and explained that NIH would be forced to fund 2,300 fewer grants than planned in fiscal year 2013. This scenario would be disastrous for our most precious national resource, the young investigators who are just beginning their professional careers in research with an eye toward making a difference. We are relying on these young investigators to continue to nourish the pipeline of new discoveries that will have an even greater impact on the welfare of patients and on public health as a whole.As detailed throughout the Report, these funding constraints are coming at a time when the of opportunities for our scientific knowledge against cancer has The in cancer research and biomedical science bring a of to who cancer or who facing cancer, as by the personal shared in this as the and due to cancer in the also the that our has a to to the and make a to this at the be Congress this year that to the federal budget are AACR members and the broader advocacy community to their and in Congress to to in a to a more to address the federal and from We our ability to cancer for the of and cancer for by the have already in cancer science and the of new cancer researchers are to new and to the of a against cancer are at an Cancer survivors are coming together to with one the of new for patients 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