AACRThousands of researchers and advocates gathered this week (April 8) in downtown Washington, DC—where the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) is currently holding its annual meeting—to protest recent cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget and demand more funds for basic biomedical research.
Hordes of scientists made their way across the road from the Washington Convention Center, where National Cancer Institute Director Harold Varmus had just concluded his talk on the agency’s current strategies in the fight against cancer, to the public square around the Carnegie Library. There, dozens of speakers—including scientists, politicians, and patient advocates—took to the stage to address the sun-soaked crowds.
Lamenting the 5 percent cut to the NIH’s $31 billion annual budget imposed by Congress last month through sequestration, AACR CEO Margaret Foti declared that “the continued erosion of funding for the most important medical research institute in the world, the National Institutes of Health, must stop.”
And Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn), herself an ovarian cancer survivor, drew huge cheers from the crowd when ...
