In case no one has noticed, the so-called War Against Cancer declared by President Nixon in 1971 has been more of a skirmish. The same percentage of Americans are dying from cancer today as in 1950! What kind of war is that?

Yes, there have been some successful battles, such as that against childhood leukemia. But for most cancers, we are still in a World War I-like “sitzkrieg” – a “sitting war.” Sen. Ted Kennedy, now a muted voice, spoke passionately for better health care. Yet when stricken with brain cancer, despite access to our best scientists and facilities, he succumbed in less than one year.

Pancreatic cancer, as Patrick Swayze and Steve Jobs unfortunately remind us, has a miserably low cure rate of 5 percent. Unfortunately, the same is true for lung cancer and certain lymphomas, which, incidentally, have become more common without explanation.

One of the failures of modern American medical science and research is the fragmentation of the effort. While we attract brilliant scientists and provide them the world’s most modern technology, the pace of our progress against cancer and other catastrophic diseases has been too slow. Why?

One reason is that research is conducted independently at assorted centers. Often researchers vie competitively for grants and funding. Such duplication of effort and competition is uneconomical and counterproductive. Another reason is that there is no central registry of progress. While scientific results are published in medical journals, today there are more such publications. Hence, even digesting the progress is not manageable.

New strategy

After 40 years of minimal progress, we should have figured out that there must be a better way to fight this important and certainly “good” war. One battle plan has come forth from two Midwesterners. Businessman Lou Weisbach of Chicago and Rick Boxer, a urologist and cancer survivor originally from Milwaukee, are the fathers of a bold but wise and practical concept. Weisbach and Boxer have a big-picture – but detailed – proposal to build a single, one-campus national center, the American Center for Cures. It would sharply focus our best minds and technologies to accelerate progress against cancer and our other most common and catastrophic diseases: Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes, etc.

The Center for Cures would address the shortcomings of our current imperfect efforts and offer a logical and practical rethinking of how to get to the finish line faster. When manpower/talent from assorted disciplines interact and pool their knowledge and experience, the pace of learning accelerates.

Furthermore, the Center for Cures would be dedicated to moving the achievements of laboratory science more quickly to the bedside. No longer should basic science research stand as a separate field. Such research should not be conducted strictly for the sake of research but must be immediately translated to improved patient treatments.

Rather than tolerate energy and resource depletion from competition between centers without a keen eye on the prize of curing human illness, we need to mobilize our most promising talent and then gather them together with all necessary technical support.

The Center for Cures is the model for a modern-day medical Manhattan Project.

During the recent Chicago mayoral campaign, there was talk of building the center there. If Chicago is not interested, other cities should be and some already are. Houston, another major medical city, is vying for the center. I suspect any large American city, home to one or more medical schools and research medical centers, would like to have such a gargantuan and prestigious facility as their own.

Hear that, Los Angeles?

Besides the health benefits to all mankind, a major medical think tank and research home means jobs – good jobs – up to 20,000 of them, belonging to well-educated scientists and scholars, many of whom might come from distant countries. The project is all win-win-win for Los Angeles, its economy and every one of us.

The need for, and wisdom of, this medical Manhattan Project against catastrophic disease, is unquestioned. Because, frankly, we have not done too well, despite decades of effort and billions of dollars. Bless the National Institutes of Health as well as other agencies, universities and foundations, but we’re moving as if we’re in quicksand. We need to change course – and quickly – because every American has had, or has a relative or friend who has had, cancer or some other fatal disease. Scary.

Developing this great center is a small step. But the disease community yearns for a major overhaul that’s long overdue. We need a sense of urgency. Wall Street had its emergency bailout. How about a medical bailout in behalf of the suffering American public?

Wouldn’t it be important for Los Angeles, arguably America’s most avant-garde city, to step up and be home to the American Center for Cures ?

Robert Kotler, M.D., is a faculty member at UCLA, a facial cosmetic surgeon in Beverly Hills, an author and publisher, and a medical device inventor and manufacturer.