On September 5th, ABC, CBS and NBC will team up to air a primetime, hour-long TV special, “Stand Up to Cancer,” to raise money for cancer research. I’m happy the networks and the entertainment industry are supporting cancer research, but it’s a sad commentary on our nation’s priorities that we’re now depending on charity – and Katie Couric’s charm – to get the job done.

Cancer kills over half a million Americans each year. As awful as that statistic is, it doesn’t tell half the story. My mother died from pancreatic cancer this year, and her illness was almost too horrible for words. We all knew from the day of her diagnosis that she had no chance because, even today, pancreatic cancer is a death sentence. And a short-term one at that: half of all pancreatic cancer victims die within six months of diagnosis and three-quarters are dead within a year. (My mother beat the odds, living about 18 months.) Hopeless, we could do little more than watch my mom waste away to the point that she looked like a cadaverous concentration-camp survivor, so weak she could neither walk nor speak.

The vast majority of funding for cancer research in this country comes from the federal government, via the National Cancer Institute, which has an annual budget of $4.8 billion. That may sound like a lot, but it’s less than two-tenths of one percent of the federal budget. As noted by Nobel laureate Arthur Kornberg, it’s also less than 10% of what Americans spend each year on soft drinks.

It’s also wholly inadequate. In introducing an emergency bill in July seeking an additional $1.2 billion for the NCI this year (the bill is unlikely to pass), Senator Arlen Specter said he had asked members of the cancer community what level of funding it would take to “conquer cancer.” Their estimate: $22 billion a year for the next 15 years. That large sum, Specter said, it “pales in comparison to the savings research breakthroughs would produce in terms of lower health care costs and caregiver expenses, savings to business and the nation’s overall economy.” Of course, this doesn’t even take into account the suffering and anguish people would be spared, which alone would justify the expense. If by some miracle the NCI budget were increased to $22 billion a year, it would still come to only 0.7% of the federal budget.

AIDS may provide a useful financial model for attacking cancer. Urgent, massive funding for AIDS research has largely transformed that once-fearsome killer into a manageable, chronic condition. President Bush is asking for $2.9 billion for AIDS research in Fiscal Year 2009. That comes to over $200,000 per AIDS death. By comparison, the president proposes to spend less than $9,000 per cancer death. In this light, even $22 billion per year for cancer research would be a bargain because, if funded at AIDS’ level, cancer research would receive more than $111 billion a year.

Cancer poses an even tougher research problem than AIDS because cancer isn’t one disease; it’s many diseases. While cancer research is hurting overall, certain cancers are neglected worse than others. Take lung cancer, the number one cause of cancer deaths in the U.S. This year, the disease will kill an estimated 162,000 Americans, 60-65% of whom are nonsmokers or former smokers. Yet research funding for lung cancer has been “far below the levels characterized for other common malignancies and far out of proportion to its massive health impact,” according to a 2001 NCI-published report. While research has raised the five-year survival rate for breast cancer to 88%, prostate cancer to 99% and colon cancer to 64%, the five-year survival rate for lung cancer is still only 15%. (I’m not suggesting we pit one group of cancer victims against another. We need to increase the size of the research pie so all can benefit.)

Pancreatic cancer is also disproportionately under-funded. Another NCI-published report in 2001 found that “severely limited funding” for pancreatic-cancer research has “limited the size of the research community pursuing progress against any aspect of the disease.” As a result, survival rates for pancreatic cancer have barely improved over the last 30 years, with a five-year survival rate of only 4%. In fact, the disease’s mortality numbers have consistently increased in recent years. This year, the fourth-leading cause of cancer death will kill an estimated 34,300 Americans.

To add insult to injury, at a time when breakthroughs in technology and fields like genomics hold great promise to advance the war on cancer, the NCI’s already inadequate budget hasn’t even kept pace with inflation, forcing cutbacks. According to one outside NCI grant-reviewer, the success rate for federal grant applications for cancer research has fallen dramatically, putting a whole generation of scientific researchers at risk. Young scientists are abandoning the field of cancer research or deciding to forgo it in the first place.

In order to repair some of this damage as well as initiate new research programs and expand existing ones, the NCI seeks an additional 25.5%, or $1.2 billion, for FY 2009. That increase would translate to less than 0.04% of the president’s proposed FY 09 budget of $3.1 trillion. Instead, that budget gives the NCI only a 0.1% increase, guaranteeing further cuts in cancer research. This will condemn still more Americans to terrible suffering and early deaths. Prayers for Ted Kennedy and other cancer victims are all well and good, but Congress and President Bush need to fund the NCI adequately.

Charitable fund-raising can help, but it can’t substitute for adequate federal financing. Researchers will go into their laboratories and undertake what are often difficult, multi-year projects only if they are assured that funding for promising work won’t be cut off in mid-stream. One-off charity telethons can’t provide those assurances. Only our government can do that. In addition, money raised by “SU2C” will be administered by the American Association for Cancer Research. While that nonprofit organization may do a terrific job, unlike the NCI it isn’t answerable to Congress and, therefore, the American public.

So when Americans sit down to watch “Stand Up to Cancer” and consider donating, I hope they will also “stand up” to Congress and the White House, and demand that those in power give the NCI the minimum $1.2 billion increase it needs. As SU2C co-anchor Couric said, channeling Howard Beale, we need to send the message to our government that we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take this anymore.