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

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.

Abbe R. Gluck is  is the Alfred M. Rankin Professor of Law, the founding faculty director of the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School, professor of internal medicine at Yale School of Medicine and the faculty director of the Yale Medical-Legal Partnership. She is also a Professor in the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale. Gluck is an expert on Congress, federalism, litigation, and health law and is the author of more than 60 articles in law, health and mainstream publications, as well as the author of a leading legislation casebook. After graduation from Yale Law School, Gluck clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and worked on the senior staffs in the administrations of NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NJ Governor Jon Corzine. Gluck filed influential amicus briefs in all of the major ACA challenges.

 

 

Charles S. Fuchs MD, MPH is Senior Vice President and Global Head of Product Development for Oncology and Hematology at Genentech and Roche, former Director of Yale Cancer Center and Physician-in-Chief of Smilow Cancer Hospital, and Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Yale Cancer Center. Dr. Fuchs has spent his career advancing and enabling great science toward improving the lives of people with cancer. An internationally recognized expert in cancer care, treatment, and prevention, he was previously Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Chief of the Gastrointestinal Oncology Division and the Robert T. and Judith B. Hale Chair in Pancreatic Cancer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Fuchs’ research and laboratory include work in molecular epidemiology, translational science, and drug development with over 700 publications and multiple FDA approvals of new cancer therapies.