I think there's a lack of understanding which is partly our fault as scientists and physicians in not communicating well enough with the public. But there's a lack of understanding of how important biomedical research is.

I think there's a lack of understanding which is partly our fault as scientists and physicians in not communicating well enough with the public. But there's a lack of understanding of how important biomedical research is.

When you think of the costs of cancer care, one can imagine that drugs like checkpoint blockers or transfer of these T lymphocytes are actually cost-saving, just as treatments for hepatitis C, while expensive, overall save money by preventing hepatitis and hep - hepatocarcinoma in patients.

I like to think of making cancer a chronic disease rather than focus just on curing cancer.

There are clearly environmental factors that can decrease the incidence and death from cancer. I would still say though that the majority of cancers cannot be prevented at this point, but they can be treated and they can be treated two major ways.

Cancer vaccines are in the future. And they could be very effective. Checkpoint blockade, which is acting your immune system to recognize those cancer cells and kill them is another very promising approach and there have been some checkpoint blockade drugs out in the market now that will release the brake on T lymphocytes, the T lymphocyte is your major killer of tumor cells.

The decrease in incidents of death from cancer is largely attributable to new medicines or therapeutics. Perhaps a third is attributable to changing our environment, and that includes of course smoking which I believe accounted for probably 20 percent of deaths from, certainly from lung cancer, more than that from lung cancer, but from cancer overall.