40 Years After Moon Landing: Why Can't We Cure Cancer?
 Editor's Note: Forty years ago this month, humans landed on the moon for the first time. We asked Christopher Wanjek why, four decades later, we can't cure cancer.
Will we ever win the war on cancer?
Richard Nixon had every reason to be optimistic when, during his 1971 State of the Union address, he called for a concerted effort to find a cure for cancer. After all, it took only three years for the Manhattan Project to produce the world's first atomic bomb. Nixon's own presidency witnessed the 1969 moon landing, a goal set forth by John F. Kennedy in 1961.
It seemed that given enough resources there was no job that Americans couldn't tackle quickly.
But with $200 billion spent and tens of millions of cancer deaths accumulated since 1971, most would say we are losing the war on cancer. Cancer is the top killer worldwide, responsible for 7.4 million or 13 percent of all deaths annually. In America cancer will soon overtake heart disease as the top killer, claiming more than half million lives annually. [more]
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