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Who’s Next? Cancer Research in the Crosshairs
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Released: April 16, 2025

Expiration: April 16, 2026

John Marshall
John Marshall, MD
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MedBuzz: Who’s Next? Cancer Research in the Crosshairs

 

John Marshall, MD: If your world is like mine, you're spending a lot of time thinking each day about the impact of governmental changes, administration changes, and their impact on us as healthcare providers, us as humans. Us as educators, us as researchers in the world of cancer care today, and we know there are dramatic events occurring every day that we are sort of figuring out what's the impact, how do we preserve what it is we wanna do?

 

So, for example, as little as one week ago. Some of the fellows that matched in our area here in Washington DC weren't sure that they were going to be able to start in July because their positions were those kinds of positions that were under the current hiring freeze that just was thrown out there and it took until last Thursday for the leadership to realize that oh, uh, we didn't mean them. They could come on and join in July. But those same fellows we're given an option to say, well, if you don't believe that, that's gonna be there for very long. In which case I'm talking about the NCI. You can go and maybe get a job for some other place, but there aren't gonna be other jobs. Right? So, these are people who their entire lives have dedicated to this prospect, have thought that they have just matched and what might be the most stable organization around the country, the National Cancer Institute, to only find out it might be one of the least stable.

 

And I was reflecting, as many have been reflecting on these just callous, huge government cuts that have been made just over the last week or so at the FDA. Some of the best minds there gone at the NCI, at the NIH, some of the best minds there gone. Let's think about that a second. So the director of the Institute of Nursing Research gone, the head of the National Institute of Minority Health, health Disparities gone. The director of the Institute of Child Health and Human Development gone along with many others just on a dime, right?

 

 They're using a model of a game show, a TV evening show, where the answer is you're fired. So we just fire people because we don't like what shirt they're wearing or where they park their car or some stupid answer like that. And I know it's so disruptive to everybody figuring out what does tomorrow hold? When's somebody gonna come and knock at your door? et cetera. So we are all in shock as an academic institution.

 

Who's the next Columbia? Apparently, it might be Harvard. They're going after them. How do we work together? NCI designated cancer centers to make sure that the administration and the house, et cetera. Understand the importance of our collaborative research and how we have contributed and will continue to contribute to the cures for cancer and other diseases.

 

Now the last piece of this is that, you know, as we talked about before, don't worry because Donald Trump and his administration is gonna cure cancer. Now, if you believe that, then sit back and let all of this just go. Leave them in charge. Let 'em do what they wanna do, because don't worry. Trust me, they're gonna cure cancer in four years. My argument is that that's unlikely at best, right? The kind of investment, the kind of people that have been fired, the kind of things that are going on is gonna reverse this process. If anything, and don't get me wrong, I would love to be wrong about this, but I don't think I am. And so how are we as a community, a medical healthcare community? How are we as a research community, how are we, are we as a drug development industry? To ensure that we keep the bar moving forward, that we provide care for our patients, that we innovate, and that we indeed do reach the same goal that our administration is seeking, and that is to cure cancer, but actually do it in as fast a timeline as we can.

 

We're gonna have to step out of our foxholes. We're going to have to look down the street, talk to each other, collaborate. Scream out loud when it's important. Stand up in front of Congress for 25 hours in a row and make sure they know that we're not happy with what's going on. The rest of the world is extremely unsettled. We are extremely unsettled. I think we should not just sit back and let it be. I think we should figure out how to work together, how to make larger voices, push back and say, there are some things that you are doing that are just not right, and we want it fixed.

 

John Marshall for Oncology Unscripted.