Introduction
How our understanding of cancer has advanced in the last three decades, leading to an understanding of the cellular and genetic level and what this means for treatment.Andrew von Eschenbach, MD
Director, National Cancer Institute
Well, what happened in 1971 with the passage of the National Cancer Act is we began a journey. Our expectation was that that journey would very quickly lead us to the point where we had totally, completely eliminated cancer. Cured it, if you will; or conquered it, if you will, in the war metaphor. That didn't happen.
What did happen, however, is that journey has led us to an unbelievable discovery and understanding of cancer now at its very fundamental genetic, molecular, and cellular level. So today, we have an opportunity to think about cancer and view cancer in a totally completely different way than before; and we have the opportunity to deal with cancer in a completely different way because today we can direct our attention to cancer based on the fact that we now are understanding cancer as a disease process.
So unlike in 1971, when we thought about conquering it, totally eliminating it, now today we can think about cancer from the point of view of preempting it as a disease process in which we'll prevent many cancers from developing or progressing; we'll detect cancers much, much earlier when we can eliminate them with much safer techniques; and we'll be able to treat cancers in a way that will modulate their behavior such that we will eliminate the outcomes of cancer, the suffering and death, that results from this disease.