In this episode of In the Headlines, Jacquelyn Cobb, associate editor of the The Cancer Letter, and Claire Marie Porter, reporter, discuss Claire’s interview with an NCI employee who was fired just days after returning from parental leave.

The story provides a personal perspective from one HHS employee who was fired as part of Department of Government Efficiency’s mass termination of probationary employees.

To protect the employee’s identity, The Cancer Letter uses gender-neutral pronouns, the pseudonym “Taylor,” and distorted audio recordings. The choice was necessary to protect Taylor’s identity, but ultimately became representative of the fact that this is happening to so many people.

“[Taylor was] hoping to go on the record initially and then decided not to, but we kind of realized that making Taylor anonymous worked really well, because their story is kind of exemplary of so many other stories,” Claire said. “They're not the only one with just weeks or months left in their probationary period. So, it kind of ended up working out that they spoke for a lot of people.”

Taylor was weeks away from the end of their probationary period, which would have ensured job security.

Taylor is working with a legal team to try to get their job back. But even if they are successful, the damage done to the HHS work environment by DOGE and the Trump Administration will remain.

“Federal employees already go through this rigorous process to become government employees. So, just this increased oversight is just a bit humiliating,” Claire said. “Also just the fact that there's this new kind of tenor of distrust and mistrust of federal employees. Taylor did say that it just won't be the same. And that's disappointing.”

Read more: Fired NCI employee says Trump’s purge was baseless yet punitive—“I feel like I’ve been erased.”

Other stories mentioned in this podcast include: 

• Pushing for tax cuts, Trump threatens the federal workforce, Medicaid, and cancer research

• Guest editorial by W. Kimryn Rathmell: Telling our stories: Bidirectional benefits of sharing our history

• Shearwood McClelland III: “When you stand for something, you’re always going to be attacked.”

• Guest editorial by Harpreet Singh: Biomarker-driven innovation: What the FDA’s evolving strategy means for oncology

• In an oral history now taken down by FDA, Peter Greenwald discusses controversy over health claims on Kellogg’s All-Bran

A transcript of this podcast is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20250305-HHS-firings

In this episode of In the Headlines, Paul Goldberg, publisher of The Cancer Letter, and Jacquelyn Cobb, associate editor, talk about controversial data cited in Trump’s “Make American Healthy Again” executive order that claims that the U.S. has the highest age-standardized incidence rate of cancer globally. But where did that data come from?

In a story in the most recent issue of The Cancer Letter, cancer epidemiologists weighed in on the origin of the questionable data: Trump executive order to “Make America Healthy Again” cites questionable data from Wuhan. 

The executive order contained this language about cancer incidence in the U.S.:

“Across 204 countries and territories, the United States had the highest age-standardized incidence rate of cancer in 2021, nearly double the next-highest rate. Further, from 1990-2021, the United States experienced an 88 percent increase in cancer, the largest percentage increase of any country evaluated.”

This data doesn’t appear to come from the World Health Organization, or the NCI Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program—both globally trusted sources. Instead, it comes from a single paper from a pay-to-play journal. 

“You have to ask why the government would ignore this crown jewel of U.S. cancer surveillance, go to a pay-to-play publication to find a number that was clearly not verified nor validated and that is flat out wrong. Why do you think they would do this?” wondered a prominent biostatistician and cancer surveillance expert who spoke on condition of not being identified by name out of fear of retribution.

None of Paul’s sources for last week’s story were willing to speak on the record—a troubling sign of the times. 

“When you call when you contact biostatisticians, epidemiologists, public health experts, they're usually proud to tell you what they think, and be quoted by name. Here I have people saying, “I can't be quoted by name, my institution might not get its grant renewed. I might not get a grant.”

Other stories mentioned in this podcast include:

• Amid funding cuts and firings, cancer groups seek relief from judges, in Congress—and in the court of public opinion 

• “The Agency finds you are not fit…” HHS notifications of firing add insult to injury

• Guest editorial by Kimryn Rathmell: The fight against cancer is global. Our focus must be as well.

• Guest editorial by George Weiner: As cancer research is threatened, we must engage in political advocacy

• Brian Rivers: Celebrating Black history reinforces the dynamic culture of America. “It gives America, in part, its identity.”  

A transcript of this podcast is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20250225-cancer-incidence-rates

In this episode of In the Headlines, former NCI Director Kimryn Rathmell speaks with Paul Goldberg, publisher of The Cancer Letter, and Jacquelyn Cobb, associate editor, about the HHS layoffs and their potential impact on mental health. These layoffs—and the broader uncertainty introduced by the current administration’s actions—are a form of trauma, Rathmell says. 

In Rathmell’s latest column, “Preparing to take care of each other in ways we never imagined,” she tells a deeply personal story about the loss of her father to suicide. 

“It came to me as I was having conversations with people and feeling a really profound transition in the way people are talking and conveying their identity,” Rathmell says. “That really struck a chord with me. The column was written as a letter and describing an experience that really was pivotal in my life, which was when my father went through an analogous type of rapid transition in his career that culminated in him taking his own life.

Rathmell warns that, as an estimated 1,165 HHS employees face a sudden career transition, that colleagues may be in crisis.

“I know that cancer researchers and particularly people who've devoted their lives to cancer research really wrapped their identity into that. And so, the way in which some of this abrupt change is happening is really putting people…off their normal sources of support. And so, I wrote this because I felt like it's something we should talk about, and we should recognize that people are having these sensations, people are experiencing this as trauma in ways that we may not appreciate.”

Other stories mentioned in this podcast include:

• On a new podcast, VCU’s Winn and City of Hope’s Carpten discuss the mission—and the future—of cancer centers

• From the chairs of ECOG-ACRIN: A perspective on indirect costs

• RFK Jr. is confirmed, NCORP stops collecting data on sexual orientation, gender. One month in: Trump’s impact on oncology 

• 20 years of EGFR research: Ramalingam, Carbone, Politi, Jänne, Govindan reflect 

A transcript of this podcast is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20250219-kimryn-rathmell-on-loss/

In this episode of The Cancer Letter Podcast, we convene a special panel of people who have played a role in the discovery of the EGFR mutation in lung cancer.

The panel is moderated by Suresh S. Ramalingam, a lung cancer expert, executive director of Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, and editor-in-chief of the journal Cancer. Other members of the panel include:

• Katerina Politi, PhD, Joseph A. and Lucille K. Madri Professor of Pathology, Scientific director, Center for Thoracic Cancers, Co-leader, Cancer Signaling Networks, Yale Cancer Center
• Pasi A. Jänne, MD, PhD, Senior vice president for Translational Medicine, Director, Belfer Center for Applied Cancer Science, Director, Chen-Huang Center for EGFR Mutant Lung Cancers, Senior physician, Professor of Medicine,  Harvard Medical School; David M. Livingston, MD, Chair, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
• Ramaswamy Govindan, MD, Anheuser Busch Endowed Chair in Medical Oncology, Professor of medicine, Division of Oncology, Director, Section of Medical Oncology,  Washington University School of Medicine
• David P. Carbone, MD, PhD, Barbara J. Bonner Chair in Lung Cancer Research, Director, James Thoracic Center, Co-leader, Translational Therapeutics Program, Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center 

May 2024 marked the 20th anniversary of the publication of papers on the role of the EGFR mutation in lung cancer. The discovery of the role of the EGFR mutation in lung cancer was a seminal event that changed the history of the disease and can be traced back to one reason why cancer mortality has been declining in the U.S.

We’ve spent a year exploring the significance of the EGFR story, a story that is 20 years old and that is still ongoing. This story, like no other, shows the importance of the interaction between basic researchers, translational researchers, pharmaceutical companies, NCI, and regulators—especially at FDA. This discovery saved and continues to save lives, and it revolutionized medicine. It’s especially important to highlight this now, as the delicate balance of oncology research is being threatened. 

This episode is part of a series.

A full transcript of this podcast is available at https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20250214_5/

Is the Community Outreach and Engagement mandate the next item on the chopping block as the Trump administration makes its mark on science policy? What about health disparities research?

“If we got rid of Outreach and Engagement, I think it would be almost like losing a major foundational aspect of a cancer center,” Robert A. Winn, the director at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center, said on The Cancer Letter’s new podcast. “And I think it would make us vulnerable, particularly in the public's eye in saying, ‘Well, what do you exist for if it's not for our benefit?’"

On the inaugural episode of The Directors, a series on The Cancer Letter Podcast, we asked Winn, a pulmonologist who holds the Lipman Chair in Oncology at VCU, and John Carpten, the chief scientific officer of City of Hope and director of Beckman Research Institute, to imagine the future of the cancer centers without COE.

“We'll lose our identity. It's becoming our identity. And we'd lose it,” Carpten concurred.

The Directors is a monthly series of interviews focused on the problems that keep directors of cancer centers up at night. The series begins during Black History Month, with Winn and Carpten who are members of an elite—and growing—cohort of Black directors of cancer centers. 

On the national level, Carpten, a genetics and genomics researcher, is the chair of the National Cancer Advisory Board and Winn is the president of the Association of American Cancer Institutes. Also, during Black History Month, Winn serves as the guest editor of this publication.

The first episode features two discussants:

• Norman A. Sharpless, former director of NCI and former acting FDA commissioner, who is now a professor of Cancer Policy and Innovation at UNC-Chapel Hill, and 
• Beverly Ginsburg Cooper, managing director for research at Huron Consulting group, where she consults with cancer centers as they work to meet NCI designation guidelines while serving their communities.

This episode is sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology. ASCO plays no role in the editorial direction of this podcast.

https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20250214_1/

In this episode of In the Headlines, Paul Goldberg, publisher ofThe Cancer Letter, and Jacquelyn Cobb, associate editor, discuss the “doomsday scenario” facing academic cancer centers that would follow the success of President Trump’s move to limit indirect costs to 15% for NIH-funded institutions. 

The topic of indirect costs has been “something you don't talk about in polite company,” Paul said, and while a drastic cut would gut academic research, oncology leaders say that conversation about indirect costs could help the field.

Also in this episode is a behind-the-scenes look at last week’s cover story about federal agencies purging websites to fall in line with President Trump’s executive orders banning any mentions of DEI, health equity, or “gender ideology.”

As part of the purge, FDA removed a series of oral histories, including one by the former FDA associate commissioner of women’s health, Marsha Henderson. 

“Getting rid of oral histories has a name. It's erasure,” Paul said. 

The Cancer History Project was able to preserve the oral history of Marsha Henderson. It can be read in last week’s issue. 

The stories mentioned in this podcast include:

• Federal judge blocks Trump administration’s move to limit indirect costs to 15% for NIH-funded institutions. The move could gut academic cancer research

• “Page Not Found:” HHS agencies purge web pages that hint at DEI, health equity, and gender

• Senate Finance Committee advances RFK Jr. to likely confirmation, with Bill Cassidy (R-LA) casting the deciding vote

• Guest column by W. Kimryn Rathmell: Communication—We need more, not less 

• LLS former CSO: Immunotherapy, precision medicine redefined blood cancer treatment

• Physicians and biopharma should improve accessibility of cancer trials
• Marsha Henderson: “You have to continue to push for what you think is the right thing for public health.” Preserving an oral history by the former FDA associate commissioner of women’s heath

A full transcript of this podcast is available.

Welcome to The Cancer Letter Podcast—a weekly podcast featuring interviews, discussions, and more to dig deep into the issues that shape oncology.