The National Cancer Institute will soon announce its budget allocations for next year. Unfortunately, we expect what has been the case for many years — childhood cancers will receive only minimal funding.

 

Second to accidents, cancer is the leading cause of death in children. As a dependent and vulnerable segment of our society, children need our protection. We must address the dangers facing children head-on.  But the National Cancer Institute has consistently failed to do this. The NCI has engaged an aggressive war against cancer, yet 96 percent of the funds its spends on the problem are focused on specific cancers which affect adults, not children. So while the incidences of cancer in children climb, and while childhood cancer destroys families and devastates communities, the federal government's resources are directed elsewhere.

 

Why? Because cancer research funds are driven by the number of people — of any age — who have the disease. And, of course, adults, with decades of exposures and behaviors, experience cancer in much greater numbers than young children. This approach therefore seems like the "democratic" way to distribute federal money. Yet it doesn't do much for the more than 15,700 children diagnosed each year with cancer, and the more than 40,000 children undergoing cancer treatment each year all across the United States.

 

But instead of looking at the number of annual diagnoses, perhaps we should consider the number of life-years potentially saved. For each child with cancer, on average, as many as 71 potential life years might be saved. That's an important factor that is not being considered when funding allocation decisions are made.

 

The limited research funding has resulted in an unacceptable lack of progress in drug development in the last 35 years. Since 1980, only three drugs have been developed specifically for use in children with cancer. Equally important, for many of the childhood cancers, the same treatments that existed in the 1970's continue to be used today, unaltered. Thanks to this lack of progress, the treatments we currently use to "cure" children, when they do work, are saddling them with a lifetime of chronic, difficult and sometimes life-threatening health complications. More than 95 percent of childhood cancer survivors will have significant health-related issues by the time they are 45 years old. That is almost all of them. We must increase funding for research that will lead to treatments that will not compromise the rest of a child's life. Targeted therapies, those which target the cancer cells and leave surrounding cells and organs unharmed, are extremely promising and with proper investment, offer hope of a cure without the same negative health effects today's child survivors face.

 

As a society, we have a moral obligation to care for and protect the vulnerable and dependent. No segment of our population is more important than our children. Children need and deserve the war on cancer to apply to cancers that affect them. It's past time for the National Cancer Institute to wage war on childhood cancers too, investing significantly more resources in saving our children and preserving their futures.