National Cancer Institute
The National Cancer Act of 1971 gave NCI a number of unique responsibilities and authorities. As the leader of the National Cancer Program, NCI is the principal agency for support of cancer research in the United States. This mission makes NCI not simply a funding source, but a convener and a facilitator of scientists from government, academia, and industry, whose mutual understandings and collaborations will be part and parcel of medicine’s future. It is, however, a difficult time for such an agenda, as it is for every aspect of our country’s economy. NCI’s budget remains nearly flat; once biomedical inflation is factored in, that budget has effectively diminished by a little more than three percent for each of the last five fiscal years. Nothing will stop NCI from its lifesaving efforts, and we work each day to make sure the Institute wisely spends every dollar. However, were NCI to receive an infusion of funding, NCI would carefully and thoughtfully spend those dollars, in an effort to, first, rebuild America’s research infrastructure capacity and then to accelerate the pace of our research efforts and progress.
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