Lambers: Congress should make cancer cure a top priority

It was 10 years ago my mother passed away from lung and brain cancer. It was the most difficult period of my life. My mother never smoked, which shows anyone can develop cancer even without key risk factors.

We are all in danger of cancer, and virtually every family has someone who has been impacted. According to the World Health Organization "Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for nearly 10 million deaths in 2020, or nearly one in six deaths." Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States.

So we should all have an expectation that Congress will be united in the fight against cancer. That means Congress has to make finding a cure for cancer a top priority in the budget.

We are the country that when we set our mind to do something, we achieve it. We put men on the moon after we resolved to do so just years before. We are the country that created the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe from the ashes of World War II. Finding a cure for cancer is something we can aspire to achieve too.

I remember speaking to an elementary school class not long after my mother had passed from cancer. We talked about ways to help charities like Stand up To Cancer. You can do so, by the way, with the Charity Miles app.

One of the kids came up to me after class and said, with great confidence and reassuringly, that they are getting close to a cure for cancer. That is how we should all feel, that a cure is coming. There are so many great research efforts ongoing and improvements in care.

We have to make sure there is enough funding so these talented researchers and doctors can keep working on ending cancer without interruptions. That means keeping Congress focused on a cure for cancer as a priority. Existing budgets need to be increased to accelerate the cancer research.

President Biden has proposed that the Cancer Moonshot program to find a cure be part of a unity agenda. So hopefully all Democrats and Republicans will agree to be united against cancer, and make it part of a partisan politics free zone.

According to the American Cancer Society, The House of Representatives Appropriations Committee is proposing a $2.5 billion funding increase for the National Institutes of Health, a $466 million funding boost for the National Cancer Institute and $2.75 billion for the Advanced Research Projects Agency on Health. This means more support for cancer research toward a cure.

Lisa Lacasse, president of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, says, "The House-proposed funding increase for NIH and NCI is precisely the kind of significant year-over-year funding increase necessary to maintain momentum toward new and improved means of preventing, detecting, and treating cancer."

Now the House of Representatives must approve the spending package with these funding increases. And the Senate must vote in favor too. There is a long way to go to achieve this. But everyone can do something to encourage Congress to come through and support the funding increases for cancer research. You can contact your representative anytime in Congress by visiting Congress.gov

Lacasse reminds us, "It is clear that cancer research does indeed save lives and the scientific community has shown that investment in cancer research is poised to make even more progress, but that work requires resources."

I see posts from the charity The Cure Starts Now about kids getting brain cancer. It's such a tragedy for anyone, especially kids, to get cancer. Every time I see these stories, or remember my own trauma with cancer, it makes me determined to help find a cure. But it's often hard to know how to help. One way is to encourage Congress to support cancer research, to make sure they don' to distracted from this vital mission to end this disease.

A friend of mine remarked how cancer destroys families like no other force. Having gone through it, I want to see cancer be destroyed so no one else experiences that sadness.

William Lambers is an author, journalist and historian. His writings have been published by The New York Times, Newsweek, Chicago Sun Times and many other news outlets.