Title: War on cancer
Content:  The war on cancer began with the National Cancer Act of 1971, a United States federal law. The act was intended "to amend the Public Health Service Act so as to strengthen the National Cancer Institute in order to more effectively carry out the national effort against cancer". It was signed into law by President Nixon on December 23, 1971. Health activist and philanthropist Mary Lasker was instrumental in persuading the United States Congress to pass the National Cancer Act. She and her husband Albert Lasker were strong supporters of medical research. They established the Lasker Foundation which awarded people for their research. In the year of 1943, Mary Lasker began changing the American Cancer Society to get more funding 
Title: National Cancer Institute
Content: August 5, 1937: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the National Cancer Institute Act (Pub. Law 75-244; 50 Stat. 559), which established the National Cancer Institute, as a division of the Public Health Service. ; 1940: The first issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute was published. ; 1944: The United States Congress made the NCI an operating division of the National Institutes of Health by its passage of the Public Health Service Act. Congress later amended the Public Health Service Act with the National Cancer Act of 1971, to broaden the scope and responsibilities of the NCI "in order more effectively to carry out the national effort against cancer." ; 1955: NCI established the Clinical Trials Cooperative Group Program, which included several 
Title: War on cancer
Content:  research. Five years later she contributed to getting federal funding for the National Cancer Institute and the National Heart Institute. In 1946 the funding was around $2.8 million and had grown to over $1.4 billion by 1972. In addition to all of these accomplishments, Mary became the president of the Lasker Foundation due to the death of her husband in 1952. Lasker's devotion to medical research and experience in the field eventually contributed to the passing of the National Cancer Act. The improved funding for cancer research has been quite beneficial over the last 40 years. In 1971, the number of survivors in the U.S. was 3 million and as of 2007 has increased to more than 12 million.
Title: Presidency of Richard Nixon
Content:  Nixon submitted two significant medical research initiatives to Congress in February 1971. The first, popularly referred to as the War on Cancer, resulted in passage that December of the National Cancer Act, which injected nearly $1.6 billion (equivalent to $9 billion in 2016) in federal funding to cancer research over a three-year period. It also provided for establishment of medical centers dedicated to clinical research and cancer treatment, 15 of them initially, whose work is coordinated by the National Cancer Institute. The second initiative, focused on Sickle-cell disease (SCD), resulted in passage of the National Sickle Cell Anemia Control Act in May 1972. Long ignored, the lifting of SCD from obscurity to high visibility reflected the changing dynamics of electoral politics and race relations in America during the early 1970s. Under this legislation, the National Institutes of Health established several sickle cell research and treatment centers and the Health Services Administration established sickle cell screening and education clinics around the country.
Title: National Cancer Institute
Content:  networks that conducted cancer clinical research primarily under the sponsorship of NCI. ; 1957: The first cancer, choriocarcinoma, was cured with chemotherapy at NCI. ; 1960: NCI began funding government-supported cancer centers. ; 1971: President Richard Nixon converted the U.S. Army's former biological warfare facilities at Fort Detrick, Maryland, to house research activities on the causes, treatment, and prevention of cancer. ; 1971: The National Cancer Act of 1971 declares "war on cancer," establishes the National Cancer Advisory Board, and allots additional funding for cancer research. ; 1975: The Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research opened in Frederick, Maryland, as a Federally Funded Research and Development Center ; 1993: The NIH Revitalization Act of 1993 encourages NCI to expand its efforts in prostate cancer, breast 
Title: Fair Deal
Content:  and groups of diseases.’ ; The Atomic Energy Commission was directed by Congress to investigate the linkage between atomic research and cancer therapies, providing some $5 million for this purpose (1950). ; A Clinical and Laboratory Research Center was established (1947). ; The research construction provisions of the Appropriations Act for FY 1948 provided funds "for the acquisition of a site, and the preparation of plans, specifications, and drawings, for additional research buildings and a 600-bed clinical research hospital and necessary accessory buildings related thereto to be used in general medical research ...." ; The National Heart Act (1948) authorized the National Heart Institute to assist, conduct, and foster research, provide training, and to provide 
Title: Breast cancer research stamp
Content:  breast cancer research. In 1998, United States Senators Dianne Feinstein, Alfonse D'Amato, and Lauch Faircloth and Congressman Vic Fazio sponsored legislation in the United States Congress to create a stamp where a portion of the proceeds of sale would go toward breast cancer research, creating the Breast Cancer Research Stamp. The legislation mandated that 70% of funds raised would go to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and 30% would go to the Breast Cancer Research Program of the Department of Defense (DOD). Art director Ethel Kessler, of Bethesda, Maryland, herself a breast cancer survivor, was asked by the USPS to design the new stamp. Kessler contacted illustrator Whitney Sherman of Baltimore 
Title: National Cancer Institute
Content:  other cancers which primarily or solely affected women, and authorized increased appropriations. ; 1998: Establishes the Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine to study pseudoscientific alternative medicine treatments for cancer ; 2009: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provided US$10 billion in additional funding for the NIH; the NCI received US$1.3 billion from that amount. ; 2016: The 21st Century Cures Act increased funding for biomedical research. The "Cancer Moonshot" program promised additional support for cancer research. ; On October 17, 2017, Norman Sharpless was sworn in as the 15th director of the National Cancer Institute. In April 2019, Sharpless left NCI to serve as the acting Commissioner of Food and Drugs. He returned to the institute in November 2019 as director.  
Title: National Institutes of Health
Content:  Over the last century, the responsibility to allocate funding has shifted from the OD and Advisory Committee to the individual ICs and Congress increasingly set apart funding for particular causes. In the 1970s, Congress began to earmark funds specifically for cancer research, and in the 1980s there was a significant amount allocated for AIDS/HIV research. Funding for the NIH has often been a source of contention in Congress, serving as a proxy for the political currents of the time. During the 1980s, President Reagan repeatedly tried to cut funding for research, only to see Congress partly restore funding. The political contention over NIH funding slowed the nation's response to the AIDS epidemic; while AIDS was reported in newspaper articles from 1981, no funding was provided for research on the disease. In 1984 National Cancer Institute scientists found implications that "variants of a 
Title: National Institutes of Health
Content:  the Division of Regional Medical Programs was created to administer grants for research for heart disease, cancer, and strokes. That same year, the NIH director lobbied the White House for increased federal funding in order to increase research and the speed with which health benefits could be brought to the people. An advisory committee was formed to oversee the further development of the NIH and its research programs. By 1971 cancer research was in full force and President Nixon signed the National Cancer Act, initiating a National Cancer Program, President's Cancer Panel, National Cancer Advisory Board, and 15 new research, training, and demonstration centers. Funding for the NIH has often been 

Question: when did congress passes legislation to fund the national cancer institute?
Answer: August 5, 1937.