Let's kill cancer

There are few things in life more terrifying than a cancer diagnosis, as any victim of this horrible disease will tell you. So let's kill cancer before it kills us. This crusade could be similar in size and scope to our national commitments to developing a polio vaccine in the 1950s and the COVID-19 vaccine in 2020-21, both of which saved millions of lives. We know this is not an impossible dream. Over the past four decades, we've made stunning progress in cutting death rates of many forms of cancer in half. But there is still a long way to go, especially in eliminating death from pancreatic cancer, lung cancer and childhood cancers. More than 600,000 Americans die from cancer each year; worldwide, that number is closer to 25 million. There is an old saying that the first wealth is good health. When one is faced with a dreadful disease or shortened lifespan, the value of material assets or consumption rapidly becomes second in order of magnitude. Most parents would give up nearly every material resource they have to prevent the death of their child. The benefits of reducing pain and suffering, and of preventing the heartache of losing a loved one to cancer, are almost incalculable. In a new study for Unleash Prosperity, Tomas Philipson and other economists at the University of Chicago calculated the enormous monetary value in the U.S. from eliminating or drastically reducing mortality from cancer. With new developments in cancer treatments such as gene therapies and prevention strategies — multi-cancer blood tests, improved diets and physical activity, reducing obesity, allowing for more coordinated development of new drugs and vaccines, and particularly deregulating the approval process — the goal of a near-cancer-free nation can potentially be achieved in the foreseeable future. Beginning in 2030, cutting cancer deaths by 80% would save some 20 million to 30 million people over a 35-year period. That's more American lives saved than American soldiers who died in every war over our 250 years as a nation combined. The economic benefits would be felt through monetized improvements in longevity, increased labor productivity and additional fiscal revenue. Killing cancer entirely generates $186 trillion in total economic benefits over the 35-year period. Lowering the death rate by 80% in 20 years adds a value to the U.S. economy of $130 trillion. If cancer elimination is viewed as an investment with research and development costs up to $800 billion, this amounts to an enormous internal rate of return: a minimum of more than 500%. There are very few investments that attain that rate of return. The private sector is likely to lead this crusade with private investment dollars, but our government needs to greatly deregulate the process that often takes a decade for a treatment or diagnostic to reach the market. The medical, drug and biotech industries that have the capacity and brainpower to achieve these goals will likely only capture a fraction of the societal benefits in terms of revenues and earnings. Previous research has found that medical innovators only capture around 5%-10% of the value of the increased health they generate to patients and society. The other 90% benefits the survivors, their families and the overall health of the U.S. economy. The gift to humanity of ending the scourge of cancer would be one of the most valuable and equitable policy agendas imaginable, providing everyone across the nation and around the world not just with better health but much higher living standards.