An advanced stage cancer diagnosis used to be almost a death sentence, but that wouldnt have to be the case if we were wise in sustaining cancer research funding. If we chose to fund more promising cancer research proposals, perhaps no child would have to die or grow up without a parent; no young couple would see their life dreams shattered by a life-threatening diagnosis, and no one would spend years wracked with uncontrollable cancer pain or nausea from chemotherapy.

Across-the-board budget cuts ― known as sequestration ― took effect on March 1, 2013, and their potential impacts are just starting to become clearer. For cancer patients and their families, these cuts spell despair. The Federal government is the largest funder of cancer research, and the sequester threatens to cut this funding by almost 23 percent in real purchasing power, to nearly 2001 levels.

One in two men and one in three women will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetimes ― 1.6 million people will be diagnosed and around 580,000 will die this year alone. Three quarters of American households will find themselves caring for a cancer patient at some point in their lives. Many of these cancers are serious, so both patients and their caregivers depend on advanced research for hope of survival or to postpone death. The American Cancer Society estimates that one in every four deaths in the United States is caused by cancer. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimated in 2008 that the total cost of cancer was over $226 billion each year, including both direct medical costs and lost productivity from illness or premature death.

Research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) has supported grants that have led to every major cancer prevention, detection, and treatment advance for decades. This kind of discovery work takes decades and costs so much time and money that few private enterprises can afford to conduct it. Many drugs that received FDA approval in the past 10 years were based on research initiated more than 30-35 years earlier.

Once stopped, promising research programs wont restart like flipping a light switch back on because unfunded scientists will leave the field to make a living elsewhere. According to the American Cancer Societys Catalyst for Cures report, NIH funding represents less than 1% of the Federal budget, and only 17% of that amount goes to cancer research. Their analysis has shown that $23.6 billion in NIH-supported medical research in 2011 generated $69 billion in other economic activity, including 432,000 high-paying jobs in every state. Further, each dollar in Federal research investment is matched by around 32 cents in private sector research funding. In an environment where we are concerned to create jobs, cutting research funding is not just short-sighted ― it is economically and morally wrong.

Not only will sequester cuts lead to fewer prospective research projects being funded, fewer research jobs, and less economic activity, but they may cut short promising genetic research initiatives that are leading to drug development for brain tumors, ovarian cancer, metastatic melanoma, and cancers caused by genetic mutations.

The timing for funding cuts couldnt be worse. Today, collaboration and information sharing among researchers, hospitals, universities, medical schools, and both medical and corporate research centers is accelerating progress just at the time that funding is most threatened. Scientists are just beginning to understand the fundamental biological mechanisms that cause cancer and to translate that knowledge into new diagnostic techniques, medicine delivery systems and improvements in pain control and quality of life for those suffering the most severe cancers.

Many grants today focus on basic cellular biology to understand what causes cancer, what allows cancer to spread from one body part to another, what components to target for treatment, genetic mutations that characterize certain cancers, new equipment and testing technologies to match new treatments to each individual patient, and so on. These are targeted toward finding more effective ways of killing the cancer without killing the patient.

Cutting cancer research now hurts the nation both medically and economically. Restoring it wont take just political courage: it will take wisdom to acknowledge the facts of research funding and its payback in lives, jobs, and the health of the national economy. The problem is clear, and the time for each of us to act is now.

Commentary by Deborah J. Cornwall, an experienced advocate on behalf of cancer patients and their families. She is the author of Things I Wish Id Known: Cancer Caregivers Speak Out, a new book based on interviews with 86 cancer caregivers and dozens of patients and survivors.

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