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Bruce Ratner is a philanthropist and real estate developer. He is the co-author of <\/em>Early Detection: Catching Cancer When It\u2019s Curable.<\/p>\n In\u00a0late\u00a02015, my brother Michael Ratner was brought to the hospital with feelings of nausea. Eventually, he was taken to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for treatment of a metastatic brain tumor.\u00a0He was 71 years old and was\u00a0one of the\u00a0most famous human rights lawyers\u00a0in the world. Despite his prominence,\u00a0and Sloan Kettering\u2019s excellence, by May 11 of 2016 he was dead.\u00a0<\/p>\n My brother\u2019s tragic end points to everything we are doing wrong on cancer.\u00a0When\u00a0President Richard Nixon\u00a0declared<\/a>\u00a0war on cancer on Dec. 23, 1971, he\u00a0had hopes that cancer would be cured within five years. More than half a century later, we have yet to come close to winning that war.<\/p>\n We spend\u00a0$200 billion annually<\/a>\u00a0treating cancer and yet it remains the second leading cause of death in the U.S., killing over\u00a0600,000 Americans annually<\/a>. The time has come to reconsider our approach to this dread disease. Even though Nixon\u2019s war has not yet been won, we have learned a tremendous amount about cancer\u00a0over the last 50 years, including the fact that\u00a0early detection\u00a0is the\u00a0single best thing<\/a>\u00a0we can do to reduce cancer deaths. Treatment is of course necessary, and terrific oncologists at Sloan Kettering and other top cancer centers do tremendous\u00a0work, but they are fighting an uphill battle against cancers caught too late in the game.<\/p>\n There\u00a0are\u00a0already some\u00a0effective tests that catch cancers early, including\u00a0well-known screenings such as low-dose\u00a0(and low-cost) CT scans\u00a0for lung cancer,\u00a0mammograms\u00a0for breast cancer, Pap smears for cervical cancer, PSA blood tests for prostate cancer, and colonoscopies\u00a0for colon cancer.\u00a0Unfortunately, these tests\u00a0are not enough.\u00a0Approximately\u00a070%<\/a>\u00a0of total cancer deaths come from cancers that currently lack recommended screening.\u00a0<\/p>\n We need to capitalize on the\u00a0emergence of a whole new generation of advanced technologies that\u00a0use genetic sequencing and machine learning to\u00a0aid in early detection and make the fight against cancer even more effective. This includes multi-cancer detection tests\u00a0(MCEDs), some of which are already\u00a0available to patients and doctors and are finding cancers and saving lives. More tests\u00a0are expected to be available soon. These tests can screen for multiple types of cancers and catch them when it is still early enough to do something about them.\u00a0These tests look for DNA fragments in the blood to check for the presence of cancer, and if detected, ascertain the origin so that it can be targeted and addressed. One of the most promising tests has a\u00a0false positive rate<\/a>\u00a0of less than one percent.<\/p>\n As promising as these technologies are, their pathway to adoption is taking far longer than makes sense. Massive regulatory hurdles stand in the way.\u00a0Worries about the cost\u00a0of new tests and\u00a0questions about whether\u00a0early detection saves lives are sadly impeding progress in the effort to save lives. The Food and Drug Administration is studying\u00a0MCEDs\u00a0and has\u00a0approved additional\u00a0tests but\u00a0it might require\u00a0waiting for longitudinal studies that would follow patients for decades, before greenlighting widely available use. And antitrust regulators, in a step that seems to directly counter President Biden\u2019s widely heralded Cancer Moonshot agenda, are skeptical of vertical integration mergers that could speed the adoption of such tests.<\/p>\n Smaller companies often need the resources of larger companies to both increase market access and manage the government\u2019s regulatory requests. In one case, the Federal Trade Commission\u2019s involvement scared off a large\u00a0investor, which could slow adoption by depriving a smaller innovator of needed resources from a more established player.\u00a0<\/p>\n We stand at the cusp of exciting new technologies that will help us win a war that our government declared\u00a0half a century\u00a0ago. Unfortunately, it is the very same government that may be\u00a0hampering\u00a0progress in that war at a time when it is so badly needed.<\/p>\n\nMore must-read\u00a0commentary\u00a0published by\u00a0Fortune<\/em>:<\/h2>\n