The surgeons have the luxury of curing many illnesses, internists and others perhaps not. I'll try to put some of this effort in context and to try to focus on what I see as the major issue, which is persistence. Persistence is working day by day, study by study, finding by finding, to make a breakthrough. I thought I'd use a piece I read recently on the war on cancer, especially given President Roosevelt's earlier quote. Here's the justification for the war on cancer.
Cancer is a problem of public health proportions.
It is a significant and prevalent problem among our Gulf War veterans. In cancer, the outcome is mortality. Cancer, as we know, is the second most common cause of death in the United States. In Gulf War illnesses, the outcome of interest is morbidity. When another President, Richard Nixon, initiated the war on cancer, he thought it would take about five years, so he said in 1976, to cure the disease.