26 July 2021: Letter to President Joe Biden (July 2021)

I emailed this letter earlier this month – to date, there has been no response:

Dear President Biden,

Please identify who I should talk to concerning your goal of “ending cancer as we know it”. To be successful, we need better management, beginning with a strategic plan similar to the one I have developed, see http://www.natpernick.com/StrategicPlanCuringCancer.html.

We need a challenging goal, such as reducing US cancer deaths from the current level of 600,000 per year to 100,000 per year.

We need to identify the knowledge gaps and focus on research to fill them.

We need to abandon outdated concepts, such as talking about “the cure” or “a world without cancer”. We need to stop considering single drugs adequate for treatment. We need to recognize that cancer is within all older adults and that our goal should be to hold it in check, not to eliminate every cancer cell.

We need to study and target systemic networks that nurture malignancy and develop treatments to push cancer cells into networks that are less hazardous.

We need ambitious goals for behavioral changes, such as reducing tobacco use to 5% of the population, excess weight to 10% of the population and ensuring that all Americans get regular medical examinations to detect early disease and to promote prevention.

We need to manage cancer, both within a single patient and in our American society. Focusing solely on technology as the answer is a mistake.

Please review and advise.

Nat Pernick, M.D.