CANCER REGISTRY: More Funds Needed to Bring Program Up to Snuff, Paper Insists
California's "landmark" cancer database, growing since the 1940s, should "be expanding, not dying a slow death," a Sacramento Bee editorial asserts. The editorial chides Gov. Gray Davis for vetoing $2.4 million in additional funds for the registry, insisting that the move will "prevent the registry from capturing information that could reveal new insights into cancer treatment, insights that could save society, not to mention the state's general fund, millions of future dollars." And because the registry's budget has remained stagnant at $7 million for almost a decade, "it can no longer maintain reliable information on treatments or on the patient's occupation. There is no data to identify, for example, cancer clusters in farm workers. There is no money to investigate any clusters, period." The editorial concludes, "Yes, there is an insatiable appetite in medicine for research money. There's also such a thing as being penny wise and pound foolish" (9/28).
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