Doctors remain powerless against cancer after 50 years of research: "The cancer mortality rate has barely changed in this century compared to 50 years ago, while the death rates of cardiac, cerebrovascular and infectious diseases have declined by about two-thirds, said Harold Varmus, a Nobel medicine prize laureate.

'Despite large federal and industrial investments in cancer research and a wealth of discoveries about the genetic, biochemical, and functional changes in cancer cells, cancer is commonly viewed as, at best, minimally controlled by modern medicine, especially when compared with other major diseases,' he wrote in the May 26 edition of the journal Science.

Varmus, a doctor at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, said real progress will not be achieved unless an 'important change in culture' takes place to overcome social obstacles and improve collaboration between researchers, doctors, pharmaceutical laboratories and regulators.

Sandra Horning, the president of the American College of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), echoed those worries at the group's annual conference earlier this month and complained of a 'lack of progress' in the application of discoveries. "