We researched the American Cancer Society to see what they were all about because we have a lot of our charitable wedding favors donations directed to them. They have a long history starting back in 1913 in New York City by 15 doctors and prominent business leaders. Back then, they called their organization the American Society for the Control of Cancer (ASCC) and their goal was to raise public awareness about cancer because if you had it at that time it was a grim diagnosis. There was no hope and no cure; cancer was a disease that was almost always fatal, not understood, and rarely talked about.

The ASCC  started writing articles for journals and magazines and spread the word about cancer to inform and educate the public. Years went by and around 1936-38 a major change took hold in the ASCC. They grew from a voluntary 15,000 group of active representatives to a 150,000 army with the ideas and energy of Marjorie G. Illig and brought about by The Women’s Field Army. This internal women’s organization was formed to wage a war on cancer and went directly to the streets, women’s clubs and any viable public organization to get the word out about cancer.

In 1945, the ASCC was reorganized as the American Cancer Society. It was the beginning of a new era for the organization.  In 1946, philanthropist Mary Lasker and her colleagues helped to raise more than $4 million for the Society – $1 million of which was used to establish and fund the Society’s groundbreaking research program. With the aid and assistance of dedicated volunteers like Lasker and Elmer Bobst, their research program began to bear fruit. In 1947, they also began their famous Seven Cancer Signals campaign, a public education effort about the signs and symptoms of cancer.

Around the same time the cancer signals campaign began, Dr. Sidney Farber, one of the Society’s first research grantees, achieved the first temporary cancer remission in a child with acute leukemia using the drug Aminopterin, thus opening the modern era of chemotherapy for cancer treatment. It was just the beginning of how scientists who the American Cancer Society supported early in their careers would go on to make great leaps in understanding and stopping cancer.

Society-funded researchers have contributed to nearly every major cancer research breakthrough we’ve seen in the more than 60 years since the Society’s research program began. They’ve helped establish the link between cancer and smoking; demonstrated the effectiveness of the Pap test; developed cancer-fighting drugs and biological response modifiers such as interferon; dramatically increased the cure rate for childhood leukemia; proven the safety and effectiveness of mammography; and so much more.   All told, the American Cancer Society has invested approximately $3.5 billion in research, including giving 44 future Nobel Prize winners the recognition and funding they needed to get started.

In the 1960s and 70s, the American Cancer Society began to expand its reach as an organization, working even more than in the past to involve all sectors in its efforts to fight back against the disease. In the 60s, the Society was instrumental in the development of the Surgeon General’s report on the link between smoking and cancer when early Society-sponsored studies confirmed the connection. This upheaval in the perception of smoking laid the groundwork for tobacco control progress – and for the corresponding lives saved – that continues today.

Their influence of public policy later contributed to the passage of the National Cancer Act in 1971, which granted special funds and authority to expand the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and revolutionized the war on cancer. With the development of the NCI, the American Cancer Society also had to adapt to a new role – that of filling in the gaps of the federal government’s focus in areas such as cancer prevention and education. Likewise, as National Institutes of Health funding for young investigators has diminished, the Society has allocated more research grants to that generation, helping promising young medical researchers enter the cancer field.   Today, the American Cancer Society is a global leader in the fight against cancer, with $1 billion in resources annually to save lives by helping people stay well and get well, by finding cures, and by fighting back against the disease. Thanks in part to the Society’s work, there are 11 million people alive in the United States alone who have survived cancer. They’ve  helped create more than 300 birthdays each and every day just since the early 1990s and won’t rest until they expand that progress so that no one – in the U.S. or around the world – will ever lose another birthday to cancer.

We started this article by saying that we have a lot of our charitable wedding donnations directed to the American Cancer Society. There’s an obvious reason for that. They have been this country’s leader in the fight against all forms of cancer. We listed all their research departments and they number over seventy!  Sadly, cancer knows almost no execptions when it comes to the human body and thus affects all of us with no exceptions. God bless The American Cancer Society!

The historical information in this article was provided by The American Cancer Society. Visit their website to learn more.

 

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• Adrenal Cortical Cancer
• Advanced Cancer
• Anal Cancer
• Aplastic Anemia
• Bile Duct Cancer
• Bladder Cancer
• Bone Cancer
• Bone Metastasis
• Brain/CNS Tumors In Adults
• Brain/CNS Tumors In Children
• Breast Cancer
• Breast Cancer In Men
• Cancer in Children
• Cancer of Unknown Primary
• Castleman Disease
• Cervical Cancer
• Colon/Rectum Cancer
• Endometrial Cancer
• Esophagus Cancer
• Ewing Family Of Tumors
• Eye Cancer
• Gallbladder Cancer
• Gastrointestinal Carcinoid Tumors
• Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor (GIST)
• Gestational Trophoblastic Disease
• Hodgkin Disease
• Kaposi Sarcoma
• Kidney Cancer
• Laryngeal and Hypopharyngeal Cancer
• Leukemia – Acute Lymphocytic (ALL) in Adults
• Leukemia – Acute Myeloid (AML)
• Leukemia – Chronic Lymphocytic (CLL)
• Leukemia – Chronic Myeloid (CML)
• Leukemia – Chronic Myelomonocytic (CMML)
• Leukemia in Children
• Liver Cancer
• Lung Cancer – Non-Small Cell
• Lung Cancer – Small Cell
• Lung Carcinoid Tumor
• Lymphoma of the Skin
• Malignant Mesothelioma
• Multiple Myeloma
• Myelodysplastic Syndrome
• Nasal Cavity and Paranasal Sinus Cancer
• Nasopharyngeal Cancer
• Neuroblastoma
• Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma
• Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma In Children
• Oral Cavity and Oropharyngeal Cancer
• Osteosarcoma
• Ovarian Cancer
• Pancreatic Cancer
• Penile Cancer
• Pituitary Tumors
• Prostate Cancer
• Retinoblastoma
• Rhabdomyosarcoma
• Salivary Gland Cancer
• Sarcoma – Adult Soft Tissue Cancer
• Skin Cancer – Basal and Squamous Cell
• Skin Cancer – Melanoma
• Small Intestine Cancer
• Stomach Cancer
• Testicular Cancer
• Thymus Cancer
• Thyroid Cancer
• Uterine Sarcoma
• Vaginal Cancer
• Vulvar Cancer
• Waldenstrom Macroglobulinemia
• Wilms Tumor