50 years of the “war on cancer”: lessons for public health and geroscience

The year 2021 marks the 50th anniversary of the National Cancer Act of 1971 and President Richard Nixon’s declaration of a “war on cancer”. In 1971 cancer was the second leading cause of death in the USA, and today it is still the second leading cause of death with an estimated 606,520 Americans dying of cancer in the year 2020. The half a century campaign to eliminate cancer reveals at least two important public health lessons that must be heeded for the next 50 years of the war against the disease—(1) recognizing the limits of behaviour control and (2) recognizing the significance of rate (of ageing) control. These two lessons result in a somewhat paradoxical conclusion in that we must have both humility and ambition in our attitudes towards future preventative medicine for the world’s ageing populations. Geroscience must become an integral part of public health if serious headway is to be made preventing not only cancer but most of the other chronic conditions of late life.