The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

by Siddhartha Mukherjee

The panel’s final report, entitled the National Program for the Conquest of Cancer, was issued in the winter of 1970, and its conclusions were predictable: “In the past, when the Federal Government has desired to give top priority to a major scientific project of the magnitude of that involved in the conquest of cancer, it has, on occasion, with considerable success, given the responsibility for the project to an independent agency.” While tiptoeing around the idea, the panel was proposing the creation of an independent cancer agency—a NASA for cancer. The agency would start with a budget of $400 million, then its allocations would increase by $100 million to $150 million per year, until, by the mid-1970s, it would stand at $1 billion. When Schmidt was asked if he thought that the country could “afford such a program,” he was unhesitant in his reply: “Not only can we afford the effort, we cannot afford not to do it.”