Now is an exciting time at Duke University Medical Center, a period of great and dramatic change. Throughout the Medical Center, people are working to prepare our institution for leadership in health care in the 21st century. Indeed, in no area of medicine has promise been a more important word than in the field of cancer. In many ways, cancer care in the latter part of this century is a story of promises kept and promises yet fulfilled. Extraordinary progress has been made.
Extraordinary work remains to be done.
Since its creation in 1972 as one of the nation's first cancer centers, the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center has been at the forefront of the effort to keep the promise of medicine through cancer care, research, and education. For more than a quarter century, it has been a leader in seeking a hopeful future for those who are affected by cancer. Drawing together physicians, scientists, and others from across the Medical Center, it has been a model of how academic medicine should be. Here, the creation of new knowledge that can be applied to the treatment of patients is not an afterthought but one of our most cherished core values, one of the fundamental reasons for our existence. In the entire history of the Cancer Center, no time has been more promising than now.