AACR Speaks Out on Proposed Cuts to Medical Research Funding

March 21, 2017 by

The American Association for Cancer Research was shocked last week to learn that the Trump administration has proposed to cut $5.8 billion from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget in fiscal year 2018.

Like our colleagues throughout the cancer research community, we fear that these proposed cuts will severely slow down our nation’s efforts to prevent, detect, and treat cancer, and potentially erase decades’ worth of the progress we’ve made against cancer. We are working very hard to ensure that these proposed cuts to the NIH never happen.

Nancy E. Davidson, MD

To this end, the day Trump released his proposed budget, we issued a statement calling on members of Congress to stand against it. Also last week, our President, Nancy E. Davidson, told The Cancer Letter that she was “horrified” by the suggested budget cuts and feared the effects on the NIH, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the countless researchers who receive support and grants from those organizations.

“We are oncologists. There is always hope. But hope requires resources, and resources in this case means that we are reliant on substantial funding from NIH and NCI to improve the health of Americans,” Davidson told The Cancer Letter.

Read Davidson’s full interview here.

Read the March 17, 2017, issue of The Cancer Letter here.

And if you’re looking to add your voice, you can urge Congress to reject these proposed cuts by sending an email, making a phone call, and joining our Thunderclap, a massive social media campaign across Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr.