We can strengthen Texas’ cancer fight
When the National Cancer Institute gave the Dan L. Duncan Cancer Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston “comprehensive” status, it meant more than a new title.
Officially, that comprehensive label recognizes the strength of the Duncan Cancer Center’s laboratory and clinical research as well as its population science, all of which goes into preventing and treating cancer and providing care and prevention services to a diverse Harris County population larger than the state of Kentucky. On a more personal note, it means that Houston researchers and physicians have enhanced abilities to fight all kinds of cancer, benefiting their patients.
Houston has another comprehensive cancer center — the topranked University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center — and the question arises as to whether Houston and Harris County needs two such facilities. The answer is, yes. Cancer is a growing problem in the region with recent state studies spotlighting high rates of childhood cancer in pockets around Harris County and estimating 16,543 new cancer cases and 6,373 cancer deaths in 2014.
Texas has not ignored the cancer issue. It has a long history of fighting the disease. M.D. Anderson itself was a child of the Texas Legislature, established as the Texas State Cancer Hospital and Division of Cancer Research in 1941 and designated as one of the nation’s first three comprehensive cancer centers in 1971.
Forty-four years is a long time for Texas to wait for more such centers, given the size of the state and the ongoing support for cancer research from its citizens, demonstrated most recently by the establishment of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. Other states already have more than one comprehensive cancer center. California has seven (four in the Los Angeles area alone); New York, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, three each; Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Illinois, two. Now Texas has three.
The designation of the Howard C. Simmons Cancer Center at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas in July as a comprehensive cancer center puts the best of
Texas has not ignored the cancer issue. It has a long history of fighting the disease.
cancer care in the reach of the citizens of North Texas. The citizens of south and east Texas will benefit from the synergy of M.D. Anderson and The Duncan Cancer Center at Baylor working side-by-side, sharing scientific equipment, resources and expertise, both in care and in training the next generation of cancer researchers and health care providers.
Like M.D. Anderson, the Baylor center is homegrown, built on the philanthropy of donors like the Dan Duncan family with its $100 million gift in 2006 that made it possible to give cutting-edge treatment to patients at Ben Taub Hospital, the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center, the Texas Children’s Cancer Center, the Baylor Clinic and the Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center.
This new tripartite powerhouse of three comprehensive cancer centers gives renewed vigor to the state’s ability to understand and conquer one of the greatest biological mysteries and cruelest medical disorders — cancer. As Texans, we will do it together.
Osborne, a physician, is director of the Dan L. Duncan Cancer Center at Baylor College of Medicine, an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center.