The National Cancer Act launches the U.S. cancer program

A law that put cancer on its own budget line

President Nixon signed the National Cancer Act on December 23, 1971. It is Public Law 92-218. The bill was S. 1828, and its stated aim was to strengthen the National Cancer Institute so the country could work on cancer more effectively.

The Act did not create the NCI, which dates to 1937. What it did was change the NCI's standing. NCI describes the main changes. The NCI director became a presidential appointee running a National Cancer Program. The director's annual budget request goes straight to the President and Congress, skipping the usual NIH and department review. That request is called the bypass budget, or the professional judgment budget. The Act also created an 18-member National Cancer Advisory Board and a three-member President's Cancer Panel, and it funded 15 new cancer research centers, local cancer control programs, and an international cancer research data bank.

The law is about money and organization. It changed no rule about who can get a test or a treatment.

What that money built that a patient can walk into

Two things from that 1971 structure show up in ordinary care.

The first is the cancer center network. NCI now funds 74 NCI-Designated Cancer Centers in 37 states and the District of Columbia. Of those, 58 are Comprehensive Cancer Centers, 8 are Clinical Cancer Centers, and 8 are Basic Laboratory Cancer Centers that do research rather than treat people. Most are attached to university hospitals.

Designation is a research standard, not a rating of bedside care. But it tends to track two things that matter for an uncommon diagnosis: a tumor board, meaning a standing meeting where a surgeon, a medical oncologist, a radiation oncologist and a pathologist look at one case together, and an open list of clinical trials. Our explainer on clinical trials versus standard treatment sets out what joining one involves.

The second is the counting. The Act's data bank grew into the SEER program, which NCI describes as the only population-based source in the United States that records the stage of a cancer at diagnosis along with how long people lived afterward. Every survival figure on this site comes from that registry.

What the record shows since 1971

SEER data show the change over half a century. For people diagnosed in 1975, five-year relative survival across all cancers was about 49.9%. For people diagnosed between 2016 and 2022, it is 70.5%.

Relative survival compares people with cancer to people of the same age without it. It is a group average, so it says nothing about any one person, and it lags: it describes people diagnosed years ago and treated with what was available then.

The rest of the picture stays large. For 2026 the American Cancer Society projects 2,114,850 new US cancer cases and 626,140 deaths; SEER carries those projections rather than producing them. About 39.2% of Americans will be diagnosed with some cancer in their lifetime. In 2023 an estimated 18,640,213 people in the United States were alive after a cancer diagnosis. Our page on cancer statistics explains how to read those figures.

Much of the gain is uneven. It came from screening in some cancers, from tobacco control in others, and from targeted drugs in a few. Averaging them together hides all of that.

When to get checked

NCI lists symptoms that are worth taking to a doctor. None is proof of cancer, and common illnesses explain most of them. What makes them worth a visit is that they persist:

• A lump or firm area in a breast or under an arm, or new nipple discharge
• Blood in the urine or stool, or a lasting change in bowel habits
• A cough or hoarseness that does not go away
• Trouble swallowing, or heartburn that keeps coming back
• Severe fatigue that lasts, or fevers and night sweats with no known cause
• A sore that does not heal, a new mole, or a mole that is changing
• Weight loss or weight gain with no known cause
• Jaundice, meaning yellowing of the skin or the whites of the eyes

Anything on that list that has lasted more than two or three weeks is worth naming out loud at an appointment. Our guide to cancer staging covers what happens after a finding.

What this does not mean

• The Act funds research and organization. It grants no coverage, no eligibility and no benefit to any patient.
• The dollar amounts in the 1971 statute were authorizations. They are not what Congress later appropriated or spent.
• NCI designation describes a center's research program. It is not a ranking of hospitals or of clinicians.
• The rise from about 50% to 70.5% survival is an average across all cancers combined. Some cancers improved far more than that, and some barely moved.
• Five-year relative survival is not a cure rate and does not predict what happens to any individual.

Sources

• NCI, National Cancer Act of 1971 — https://www.cancer.gov/about-nci/overview/history/national-cancer-act-1971
• National Cancer Act of 1971, Public Law 92-218, 85 Stat. 778 (December 23, 1971), govinfo — https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-85/pdf/STATUTE-85-Pg778.pdf
• NCI, NCI-Designated Cancer Centers — https://www.cancer.gov/research/infrastructure/cancer-centers
• NCI SEER Program, Overview of the SEER Program — https://seer.cancer.gov/about/overview.html
• SEER Cancer Stat Facts, Cancer of Any Site — https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/all.html
• NCI, Symptoms of Cancer — https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/diagnosis-staging/symptoms

How this article was prepared

An AI-assisted editorial system helped prepare this page. No named medical reviewer has reviewed it unless one is listed.

The National Cancer Information Foundation publishes Cancer Explained. This page is for learning. It is not medical advice and does not suggest a test or treatment.

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