Thursday, October 5, 2006 - 7:00 p.m.
Cancer: the Cost of Cure
Stern Center, Great Room

Issue in Context

With medical care costs around the country soaring, it is no surprise that cancer drugs are doing the same. However the price increases of pharmaceuticals are not uniform. Express Scripts, a pharmacy benefit manager, produced a report indicating that the cost of a prescription for cancer treatment drugs rose 16% last year, while other prescription costs rose only 3%. Marcia Angell, faculty member at Harvard Medical School and former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, suggests that these costs are "really exploiting the desperation of people with a life-threatening illness." Yet if simply treating cancers costs this much, how much would it cost to find cures? If cures are possible, who should pay the billions it may take to find them?

About the Speaker

The speaker and Metzger-Conway Fellow, Dr. Michael Weiner, is a Dickinson College alumnus who received his medical degree from the State University of New York Health Sciences Center. After completing his postgraduate training at Montefiore Hospital and Medical Center of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York University and the Johns Hopkins University Hospital, he went on to devote his career to children with cancer and their families. Dr. Weiner serves as the director of the Herbert Irving Child & Adolescent Oncology Center at the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of New York-Presbyterian, a professor of pediatrics at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and was the founder of the Hope & Heroes Children's Cancer Fund.

The Metzger-Conway Program was established at Dickinson College in 1982. Originally designed as a program for bringing distinguished women graduates back to the College, the Program was expanded in 1987 to include both men and women of distinction. Typically, Metzger-Conway Fellows are brought back to the college for a two to three day residency. During that time, they participate in conferences, present lectures in classes and meet with various faculty and student groups. The goal of the Metzger-Conway Program is to provide Dickinson students with role models and to enrich the curriculum. The Program also gives the College an opportunity to celebrate the careers of individuals who have reflected credit upon Dickinson , and upon themselves, by their
personal and professional activities.

Related Links

Herbert Irving Child & Adolescent Oncology Center at Columbia University Medicle Center
American Cancer Society
American Association for Cancer Research