A New Deal for Cancer: Lessons from a 50 Year War

by Abbe R. Gluck, Charles S Fuchs Narrated by Brittany Pressley, Graham Halstead

Overview

An unprecedented constellation of experts-leading cancer doctors, policymakers, cutting-edge researchers, national advocates, and more-explore the legacy and the shortcomings from the fifty-year war on cancer and look ahead to the future.

The longest war in the modern era, longer than the Cold War, has been the war on cancer.* Cancer is a complex, evasive enemy, and there was no quick victory in the fight against it. But the battle has been a monumental test of medical and scientific research and fundraising acumen, as well as a moral and ethical challenge to the entire system of medicine. In A New Deal for Cancer, some of today's leading thinkers, activists, and medical visionaries describe the many successes in the long war and the ways in which our deeper failings as a society have held us back from a more complete success.

Together they present an unrivaled and nearly complete map of the battlefield across dimensions of science, government, equity, business, the patient provider experience, and more, documenting our emerging understanding of cancer's many unique dimensions and offering bold new plans to enable the American health care system to deliver progress and hope to all patients.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

A probing collection of essays on the medicine and money involved in the war on cancer.”—Kirkus

“A New Deal for Cancer offers new perspectives to issues the oncology community has long grappled with. For that, it is highly recommended.”—ASCO Post

Kirkus Reviews

2021-10-13
A probing collection of essays on the medicine and money involved in the war on cancer.

One of Richard Nixon’s many failed promises was that cancer would be conquered as surely as illegal drugs would be. That didn’t come to pass—though, as Yale Law School health policy specialist Gluck and oncologist Fuchs point out, the death rates from cancer have fallen by 29% in the last 30 years. “Efforts in cancer prevention, most notably reduction in the use of tobacco products, account for much of the mortality reductions,” they write, “though recent advances in cancer therapeutics are now also contributing.” What will it take to bring the rate down even further? Contributors, including geneticists, public health and public policy specialists, physicians, cancer researchers, and pharmaceutical engineers, examine the many moving parts of the effort. One answer is more money, since cancer care is outpacing other medical costs. Care costs are better managed in physician-driven practices rather than corporate-driven ones. Even so, a kind of mentality is at play that, writes Siddhartha Mukherjee, is forming a “cancer institution” or totalizing cancer world in which the passage into illness is more emphasized than the passage into wellness. “I fear that we now possess one-way passports into the realm of illness,” he concludes. Other contributors examine developments in evidence-based screening, argue for the need for a “national cancer care databank,” and forecast improvements in imaging technology that will aid in earlier detection of tumor growth. Provocatively, one call is for mandatory HPV vaccination. The response to Covid-19 provides a model for cancer care and pharmaceutical development, although it will work only with increased federal funding, requirements for better reporting, and enhanced coordination among states.

Of considerable interest to professionals working in the many fields associated with cancer care.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173022004
Publisher:	Hachette Audio
Publication date:	11/16/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

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