What we owe the people cancer has taken

James Martorano

I was recently told that my niece Beth has cancer.

Hearing her name alongside that diagnosis brought back losses I know too well. My father died in my arms after suffering from colon cancer. My Fordham classmate Patricia died of the same disease. My good friend Stew succumbed to pancreatic cancer. I could keep naming people. When I hear the words cancer research, I do not picture a line in a federal budget. I picture my father. I remember Patricia and Stew. And now I think of Beth, and of what I hope research can still do for her.

For years I believed that research might find a cure in my lifetime—or, if not, in my children’s. That hope now feels less secure. The Trump Administration has disrupted medical research and proposed deep cuts to it. I want to know what those decisions have cost us. I also want to understand why defeating cancer, of all things, has become entangled in political conflict. A tumor does not ask how someone votes before it grows.

The first obligation is to be precise about what has happened. The administration proposed severe cuts to the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute for fiscal year 2026. Congress did not enact the proposed cut to the cancer institute. Its enacted 2026 appropriation is $7.35 billion, $128 million above the 2025 level. That matters. It would be wrong to tell a grieving family that the institute’s entire budget was slashed when Congress preserved—and modestly increased—it.

But the enacted budget does not erase the disruption. Grants across the NIH were terminated or delayed, and researchers faced uncertainty about whether work already under way could continue. A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine identified 383 NIH-supported clinical trials whose grants were terminated between late February and mid-August 2025, affecting more than 74,000 participants. Those trials concerned several diseases, not cancer alone; the number must not be presented as 383 canceled cancer trials. Even so, cancer studies were among the affected work. A disrupted trial is more than a setback on a laboratory calendar. It can interrupt a patient’s access to an experimental treatment and make it harder to learn whether that treatment helps.

The administration has proposed another reduction for 2027. Its request would cut overall NIH funding by about 12 percent compared with 2026, according to the American Association for Cancer Research. That is a proposal, not an enacted budget. Congress will decide what to fund. Yet a proposal has consequences before a vote is taken: a young scientist choosing a field, or a laboratory deciding whether to begin a long study, must judge whether support will still be there years from now.

So how much damage has been done to my dream? No honest person can give me a number of cures lost or years added to the wait. Discoveries do not arrive on a schedule. We cannot identify the successful experiment that would have occurred if every grant had continued. We can say something narrower and firmer: terminating trials, delaying awards, and making future support uncertain reduce the chances to test ideas and build on results. Some work may resume. Other work may lose the people, patients, or momentum that made it possible. The full consequences will take years to see.

Nor would one discovery cure every cancer. Colon cancer and pancreatic cancer differ, as do tumors that arise in the same organ. Researchers are pursuing many paths: preventing cancers, finding them earlier, matching treatments to a tumor’s biology, and helping patients live longer when a cure remains out of reach. That may sound less dramatic than announcing “the cure,” but to a family it can mean everything. A screening test that finds a tumor in time, or a treatment that gives someone years rather than months, is a victory worth pursuing.

There is reason to believe such victories are possible. The American Cancer Society reports that the U.S. cancer death rate fell 34 percent from its 1991 peak through 2023. It estimates that decline corresponds to 4.8 million cancer deaths averted. That progress reflects a combination of changes, including less smoking, earlier detection, and better treatment; it cannot be credited to research funding alone. But it shows that the fight is producing results. My father, Patricia and Stew were not saved by those gains. Millions of others have had more time because cancer prevention and care improved.

The unfinished work is immense. The National Cancer Institute estimates that more than 626,000 Americans will die of cancer in 2026. Colorectal cancer is expected to cause about 55,000 of those deaths; pancreatic cancer, about 53,000. Pancreatic cancer’s five-year relative survival rate remains under 14 percent. These are projections and population statistics, not predictions for any one patient. To me they are also reminders that the diseases that took people I loved continue to threaten other families.

I know that public money must be accounted for. Research proposals should be judged carefully, results tested honestly, and programs changed when evidence calls for it. Those are reasons to strengthen the scientific enterprise, not to leave promising work in limbo. People of different political beliefs can disagree about budgets and still recognize a shared responsibility to patients. Congress’s decision to preserve the cancer institute’s 2026 funding shows that common ground is possible. It also shows why citizens must pay attention to the difference between what an administration proposes, what agencies do, and what Congress ultimately funds.

I cannot know whether a breakthrough will come in my lifetime. I still hope it will. I hope Beth receives the best care available, and I hope my children will live in a world where a cancer diagnosis carries less fear. That hope has been damaged by real interruptions to research, but it has not been destroyed. Scientists are still working. Patients are still volunteering for trials. We can still insist that their efforts receive steady, serious support.

When my father died in my arms, there was nothing I could do to give him another day. We can do something for the people who come next. We can protect the patient work of discovery, ask our leaders to defend it, and refuse to treat the fight against cancer as a partisan prize. We should vote for representatives who pledge to safeguard sustained cancer research—and hold them to that pledge once they are in office. I do not need anyone to promise me a cure by a certain year. I need our country to give researchers—and the families waiting for them—the best chance we can.