“Cancer: The Great Darkness” wasn’t alone in building a case for a coordinated national response to cancer. In May that year,50 Life carried its own dispatch on cancer research, which conveyed the same sense of urgency. The New York Times published two reports on rising cancer rates, in April and June. When cancer appeared51 in the pages of Time in July 1937, interest in what was called the “cancer problem” was like a fierce contagion in the media.
