MOORE: Cancer researchers are worried that a round of funding cuts in the federal government's new budget could halt or even reverse their work, especially when it comes to novel health treatments. Ozarks at Large’s Daniel Caruth has more.
The White House's proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 is under review by Congress right now. The current proposal would cut funding for cancer research from the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute by some 40%. Dr. Julie Gralow is the chief medical officer of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and says the cuts would impact some basic research and clinical trials that help advance our understanding of cell mutations and cancer treatment.
"The rarer cancers or pediatric cancer where there are small numbers, and so it doesn't really have commercial viability that attracts private investment because the numbers are so low," Dr. Gralow said. "Additionally, we fund a large clinical trials network that is active in virtually all states that is looking once that foundational research has reached the level so that we're now looking at it inpatients and doing randomized trials. We enroll patients in clinical trials, offer them opportunities to maybe get access to the next breakthrough. So the government funds a lot of research that others don't and won't."
By the end of 2025, the American Cancer Society estimates that there will be 2 million new cancer cases. Gralow says while rates of diagnoses are on the rise, the death rate is declining. The latest data from the National Cancer Institute shows there are more than eighteen million cancer survivors in the US, and Gralow believes these federal cuts will end up hurting those patients.
"We've had about a third reduction in cancer deaths since that war on cancer started, so we've had a lot of impact," she said. "If we cut the funding by forty percent, which is what's been proposed in the president's budget, we will really lose that progress that we've made. We will not have the same rate of breakthroughs in new treatments, and it will impact not just the present, but the future generations."
In Arkansas, the rate of cancer deaths was one hundred and 66 per 100,000 people, in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One of the highest in the nation, with more than twenty thousand new diagnoses expected across the state this year. Gralow points out that the next generation of providers and researchers could also be discouraged to enter the field because of the loss of federal support.
"We are already starting to see some of what we call brain drain," she said. "So those who are involved in treating cancer, researching cancer, the young, up and coming early careers are, really because of all the uncertainty going on now about whether there will be further funding for cancer research, they're either leaving the country. Other countries are looking to take our best and our brightest. Or, they're giving up on the field and going into another field entirely."
Gralow says she fears private funders will not be able to adequately replace federal backing when it comes to advancing scientific knowledge.
"There's an interesting and somewhat scary younger age at diagnosis of certain kinds of cancers, such as colon cancer, that we don't understand," she said. "And this is exactly where federal research funding is going to help us figure out why are people being diagnosed with colon cancer at a younger age? We don't understand that. And that general concept, that general question is not going to be funded by industry."
Gralow says, traditionally, cancer research has seen bipartisan support in Congress, and earlier this month, a Senate committee put forth a bill that would slightly increase funds for the National Cancer Institute. But it has not been adopted by the full Congress. The deadline for approving or countering the president's 2026 budget plan is Sept. 30.
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