Public Awareness Of Cancer Research: The Driving Force
Behind GM's Awards
It's not easy to compete with the prestige of the Nobel Prize. But the 13-year-old General Motors Cancer Research Foundation's annual awards program is quickly earning a reputation as a Nobel "predictor." Of the 47 cancer researchers to receive awards from the GM Foundation, four later received Lasker Medical Research Awards, and five won the Nobel, including 1990 laureate E. Donnall Thomas of the Seattle-based Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and 1989 laureates J. Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus of the University of California, San Francisco. In addition to gaining publicity for the GM program, the GM Cancer Research Foundation Prizes are helping to raise awareness of cancer research in the eyes of the scientific community and the public.
The foundation, created in 1978, was proposed by Roger Smith, then General Motors Corp.'s executive vice president (later the company ...
