Name: Dr. Charles J. McDonald
Position: Physician-in-chief, department of dermatology, Rhode Island Hospital; professor of medical science/chairman of dermatology department, Brown University School of Medicine; president, national board of directors of the American Cancer Society
Backround: Born and raised in Florida. Asst. professor of oncology and pharmacology, Yale University School of Medicine, 1966-1968; asst. professor of medical science, Brown University School of Medicine, 1968-74; professor of medical science, Brown University School of Medicine, 1974-present; dermatologist, Rhode Island Hospital, 1970-present.
Education: Howard University College of Medicine, M.D., 1960.Family: married, three children
Residence: Bristol
PBN: You were named president of the American Cancer Society last week. Before that you were Rhode Island division president, from 1980 to 1983. Did the recent appointment surprise you?
MCDONALD: Let’s say the appointment to the position of president was not a surprise. The surprise was being selected (earlier) to go on to the track toward presidency. In the American Cancer Society there are a series of positions that you hold. Once you achieve the particular position, unless something screws up royally, you’re on the track to become president. And it’s not a competitive track. Once you’re nominated to that specific chairmanship of that particular committee then your next step is out of committee chair to that. I think somebody somewhere decided in that nominating committee that I may have something that I could contribute to the society. That was their decision. I guess as the years passed, their decision was confirmed.
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Altogether, you’ve spent 30 years volunteering for the society. Why do you do it?
I think it’s an important area. But you have to remember that I have a pretty long history of commitment to the community. The cancer society isn’t the only thing I’ve been involved in. I’ve been involved in mental health groups, Planned Parenthood, the state school system, a whole series of Providence health centers. It’s a matter of I grew up in a family that had a commitment to the community always and that just sort of follows through.
Your primary responsibility during this one-year term will be steering the board’s agenda. In what direction do you plan to take it?
You mean try to! Invariably, about three weeks into the year something big happens and it changes the whole direction. Last year it was tobacco. We never knew all of this was going to happen with tobacco. That steered the agenda for the society practically for the whole year.
Okay. Assuming nothing unexpected happens.
What I’m going to try to do is seek parity for all cancer within society. When I speak of parity I’m really talking about trying to put an emphasis on all cancers. As you know, the biggies now are breast cancer, lung cancer. The society has some very worthy goals for 2015. They’re lofty goals. If we’re to achieve those goals, we’ve got to think more than breast, more than lung. We’ve got to start thinking of colon cancer, cervical cancer, melanoma and cancer in children.
What are those goals?
The goals are a 50 percent reduction in mortality, a 25 percent reduction in incidence and what’s called a measurable change in quality of life for patients with cancer. That’s just a little over 15 years from now.
How do you intend to achieve parity?
I would try not necessarily to redirect monies that are going to the variety of cancers, but try to add more to the kitty; to see that there’s a more equitable distribution of funds to address all of the cancers. Because when somebody gets cancer and they die of cancer, it didn’t matter what kind it was. It was a cancer. And if we had given a little bit more money toward finding out why that cancer occurred, we probably could have saved a few more lives. So I think parity is really what we should be looking for and not saying ‘the cancer of the day is.’ In the past, the society has said these are our core goals. I’d like to get away from that and let’s start saying lets get more money in for cancer education, prevention, all these things we need to do in order to cure it.
In what area or areas is the society doing a good job?
They’re doing a superior job in funding for research. You may say they have a budget that’s only $100 million dollars and the National Cancer Institute has $2.5 billion; where does that fit in? But the money that the cancer society has is used for young investigators, people you need to take a chance on. You give them that chance and ultimately they can go on to compete for the big dollars. When you look at it, I’ve forgotten how many medical Nobel prizes have been given out recently, but at least 30 of those people had been supported by American Cancer Society money early in their careers so that we do well.
In what way or ways is the society falling short?
The things we have not done well is advocate for people with cancer. We haven’t done that. We’re beginning to do it. The other thing is working with other groups. Up to now, it’s been a society that has tried to do it all. And it doesn’t have the money. Even though our current budget for this year is about a half-million dollars, that still isn’t a lot when you try to do research, education, the whole thing. So now I think we should try to engage other people working in this fight and bring some of these other groups in and try to work with them in terms of eliminating cancer.
I was at a meeting yesterday in Texas and I heard that there were some 800 organizations that have the word cancer in their name and were looking for funds for cancer. I was on the plane going down to Texas and I was sitting next to a young man and he told me that his fiancee’s family is starting a cancer foundation. Just think, if we put all those dollars together working toward common goals, what we could accomplish.
Somebody would have to lead the way.
Yes. I think it’s up to the society to do that. And they’re beginning to. You’ve probably noticed that you’re hearing more about prostate cancer in African-American men. That started last year when the cancer society, the NCI, the Prostate Cancer Coalition, 100 Black Men of America and one or two other organizations got together in Dallas and formed this coalition. That has been a tremendous project. It’s like wildfire now. It’s everywhere. And, up until now, you never even heard of that. That’s the kind of thing I think we ought to be doing more of.
How can the business community help?
One place is just work-site education. Also helping in terms of funding. Right now we receive a substantial amount of our funding through the United Way. And it’s the business groups who keep that organization afloat. Also by promoting good health in the company. The meeting that I attended was exceptional in that we had at least four or five business leaders trying to get all the (cancer) groups together. That’s certainly involvement. I was very interested in hearing how the business community had joined in as members of the steering committee.
It seems like every other week I read a story or see a news clip about a promising cancer treatment. What do I — the reader, the viewer — do with that information?
Most of the information you should really not even pay much attention to, other than the general trend of the information. For example, somebody was speaking about finding a gene that would turn off a particular cancer. To me that’s not really important, turning off the cancer in a chicken. However, the fact that we are now beginning to find out that genetic control of cancer is extraordinarily important, that’s the thing that you need to home in on. Not that one little experiment. But when you put them all together then you begin to say ‘oh, there is something to genetics and cancer.’
Do you think there will ever be a cure for cancer? Or will we just find better treatments?
Oh yes. I honestly do. It isn’t going to be soon because there are too many things you have to do. I shouldn’t say a cure. I would say a preventive, because we’ll begin to dissect things and we’ll begin to know just what causes cancer. We used to say you can’t prevent cancer. But we know now that we can prevent lung cancer, we can prevent skin cancer, we can prevent colon cancer. When we start to learn, people learn. And they start appreciating the fact that by changing behavior you can almost assure yourself that this kind of cancer isn’t going to occur.
