PART SIX
 
THE FRUITS OF
LONG ENDEAVORS

We are really reaping the fruits of our long endeavors.

—Michael Gorman
to Mary Lasker, 1985

The National Cancer Institute, which has overseen American efforts on researching and combating cancers since 1971, should take on an ambitious new goal for the next decade: the development of new drugs that will provide lifelong cures for many, if not all, major cancers. Beating cancer now is a realistic ambition because, at long last, we largely know its true genetic and chemical characteristics.

—James Watson, 2009

The more perfect a power is, the more difficult it is to quell.

—Saint Aquinas, attributed