(CNN) -- President Obama's pledge to conquer cancer "in our time" is a great goal, but one of America's top cancer experts isn't sure he'd use the word "cure."
Despite chemotherapy, some breast cancers recur, like a "smoldering fire that flares up," Dr. Otis Brawley said.
"The idea of [calling for] a cure does scare me a little bit because, I don't think that's realistic in some cancers," says Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society. "But I like the general overall idea, and I'm thrilled about the focus on health."
Obama's first proposed budget includes $6 billion for cancer research by the National Institutes of Health. That's on top of the additional $10 billion provided by the stimulus package for 2009 and 2010.
But some cancer specialists say that rather than finding a cure, a more realistic scenario is that certain cancers that are fatal today will move into the realm of chronic illnesses.
By chronic disease, doctors mean "the way we think of diabetes or heart disease as chronic diseases, where people could live in peaceful coexistence with cancer, as opposed to the cancer continuing to advance," said Brawley, who also is CNNhealth.com's conditions expert.
Dr. Tony Reid, an oncologist and director of clinical trials at the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego, shares this view. He sees the long-term management of certain cancers as chronic illness as a "primary intermediate step" as researchers work towards cures.
1 comment:
Where is the cancer cure? You and I will never see a cure. Do you realize how much money these "researchers" will lose if they find "the cure"? Billions of dollars is poured into cancer research every year and the researchers pocket a goodly portion of that money. The gravy train will come to a screeching halt if they ever announce "We have the cure!"
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