Douglas Flora: While we continue to fight for public investment, we must also look to other champions
Douglas Flora, Executive Medical Director of Oncology Services at St. Elizabeth Healthcare, shared a post on LinkedIn:
““If you think research is expensive, try disease.” — Mary Lasker.
Mary wasn’t a doctor or a scientist. She was a relentless catalyst.
A socialite-turned-activist who decided that watching people suffer from preventable diseases was unacceptable—and used her voice (and rolodex) to do something about it.
Thanks to her advocacy, U.S. federal funding for medical research exploded. She helped birth the modern NIH. Her fingerprints are on the breakthroughs that have saved millions of lives—including those made possible by cancer research.
I’d never read about her work until The Emperor of all Maladies told her story. Now as I meet w prospective donors I think of her work often. She saved more patients with her advocacy than I can as an Oncologist.
Because here’s the hard truth:
Medical research funding is being questioned. Again. And while we continue to fight for public investment, we must also look to other champions.
For me, that’s the American Cancer Society and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN). They’re the only organizations with the scale, the infrastructure, and the mission to fill that critical gap. I’ve volunteered with them for years and proudly advocate for their goals at our statehouse and on Capitol Hill. ACS CAN, is doing the hard policy work to keep progress moving forward.
If you’ve ever beaten cancer, helped someone through it, or just hoped we could do better—now is the time.
Join us. Support ACS CAN. Raise your voice.
Become an advocate today.
Because we all need to be a little bit more like Mary Lasker these days.
And the next breakthrough depends on it.”
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