Katie Britt Asks Expert To Explain The Current Rise In ‘Incidents Of Cancer’

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During Wednesday’s Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) questioned Dr. Barry Paul Sleckman, the Director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center, about the rise in cancer incidents.

Transcript

00:00Thank you for that. It was a pleasure to be on the STAAR Act, and we'll keep at it.

00:05Senator Britt.

00:06Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Thank you to each and every one of you for being here.

00:11Thank you for your opening testimony. It was incredibly powerful, and I have to agree,

00:15Charlie, you are absolutely the best. I want to welcome everyone that's here as well.

00:20I know we have a number of Alabamians, one of which I had an opportunity to meet this morning,

00:24Gary Cornelius, to tell his story, to talk about his journey, and to say thank you to the O'Neill

00:30Comprehensive Cancer Research Center for saving his life. And the truth is, is everyone knows a story

00:36like Gary's. It's either ours personally, it's a loved one's, it's a family member, it's a neighbor,

00:44it's a co-worker. And so we understand that smart investment and continued research is essential

00:50to make sure that we can save lives and change our lives moving forward. And so we've heard a lot

00:56about the progress that we've made over the last several years and decades, and want to thank you

01:00for that. Dr. Sluckman, I'd love to know, what are some of the initiatives currently going on at UAB?

01:06What are some of the things that you're doing and investing in that will ultimately change lives

01:10in the future? Yes, thank you, Senator Britt, for that question. And I'd like to answer it on behalf

01:18of the dedicated researchers and clinical care professionals that really do the work at the

01:25O'Neill Comprehensive Cancer Center. It's really hard for me to answer that question. You know, people

01:30always ask, what's the most exciting thing that's going on? And I say, everything. Everything is exciting.

01:38And, you know, I couldn't have said that in 1990, but I can say that today. You know, next week,

01:45next month, we'll find that we'll turn the corner in a major clinical trial that now has given us

01:53some insight or hope for a treatment for an otherwise untreatable cancer. Those are the things

01:59that are the most exciting to me. But, you know, then again, I'm a basic scientist. So at heart,

02:04what I love more than anything is someone that comes into my office and says, yeah, we just had

02:10an amazing new finding in lab that we think will shed important insight into a disease, a cancer,

02:19or potentially a new treatment for a cancer or treatment of a resistant cancer. So those are the

02:25kind of things that are going on at the O'Neill Comprehensive Cancer Center. And honestly, those

02:30are the kind of things that are going on at all of the 72 other NCI-designated cancer centers

02:36in this country, thanks to the support of that program. Thank you for that question.

02:41And you also mentioned in your opening testimony, you said back when you were, you know, a young

02:46physician just starting out researching that type of thing, there were types of cancers you

02:50couldn't have imagined would be something that someone could live the way that they do now.

02:57You said, was it metastatic melanoma? Metastatic melanoma, yes. So you said it was six months and

03:03now it's six years. And I think that the average there, I mean, even over 43% of people diagnosed

03:07are living over 10 years past that. So that progress is tremendous. But we also see across the country that

03:14incidence of cancer overall are on the rise. What would you say is attributable to that? And then

03:20also a subset of that, what do you think about the fact that we feel like the younger population,

03:25we've seen an increase in cancer there as well? Okay, yes. Thank you for those questions,

03:30Senator Britt. I think that the first of all, the incidence of cancer is definitely rising in this

03:37country. And I would say that will probably continue to rise. A lot of people have used that to discuss

03:43whether or not we're investing enough in prevention and doing a good enough job with

03:48prevention. And I would say we're probably not investing enough and we're not doing a good

03:52enough job. There's still plenty of people in this country who smoke. There's an obesity epidemic in

03:57several states, including our own. Those are risk factors for cancer. But the major risk factor,

04:05the major number one risk factor for cancer is age. And so the major reason that the cancer rate is

04:13increasing, are you ready? It's because we're having such great success with research in approaching

04:20other diseases, cardiovascular diseases, pulmonary diseases, renal diseases, neurologic diseases,

04:27infectious diseases, all things that would have killed citizens in this country before they got cancer,

04:34they're now living with to much older age where they increase the risk of getting cancer.

04:41And then you asked me about this new thing which has cropped up over the last couple of years where

04:47younger groups of people, some in their 20s, for example, are developing colon cancer. This is a

04:54serious problem. It hasn't reached epidemic levels yet, but it is disturbing that this has come up.

05:01There are new grant RFAs to actually begin to study this. I think that at this point, no one really has a

05:07good idea why that is, but we all know that we need to figure that out quickly.

05:13And one more question. My time is expiring. Can you tell the committee why federal funding is unique

05:18in cancer prevention research? Federal funding is unique in cancer prevention research in part

05:25because there are not a lot of other revenue streams for cancer prevention. This is not really

05:32a high priority, for example, for industry and pharma. And so federal funding to understand

05:39how to develop cancer prevention approaches is critical. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

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