National Press Club to Host "NEWSMAKER" Media Briefing on "What Impedes Cancer Research" With Harold Varmus, MD, Director of National Cancer Institute

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Sep 19, 2012, 02:56 ET

WASHINGTON, Sept. 19, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following is being released by the National Press Club:

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20080917/NPCLOGO)

Date: Tuesday, Sept. 25
Time: 10 a.m.
Place: National Press Club, 529 14th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20045

Nobel Laureate Dr. Harold Varmus, director of the National Institutes of Health's National Cancer Institute, will discuss the barriers that impede the nation's ability to make faster progress against cancer.

Varmus is also prepared to discuss national budget issues such as "sequestration" and the lack of focus on health research in the 2012 presidential campaign.

Over the past 40 years, the National Cancer Institute has spent roughly $90 billion on research to understand, prevent, diagnose and treat cancer. The effort has had many benefits, most important a decline in age-adjusted death rates, which are the best indicators of progress against cancer. Overall, cancer death rates have decreased since the 1990s at an average of more than 1 percent per year; for children, cancer death rates have been in decline since the 1970s. Still, cancer remains a leading cause of death in the United States and the world. In this year alone, more than 1.5 million people in the United States will be diagnosed with cancer, and more than half a million will die from it.

Varmus is the author of The Art and Politics of Science, a look at how and why science fares badly inside the Beltway. He was on the Obama administration transition team for health and science. At the time of his appointment as NCI director he co-chaired the President's Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology.

SOURCE National Press Club