So Dr. Brawley, what are the current recommendations, and how does this pertain to Pope Leo?

Pope Leo had a chest X-ray for other reasons, and on that chest X-ray, there was an abnormality which led to some workup.

In terms of screening, which is just doing a spiral CT in asymptomatic individuals, both the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and the American Cancer Society recommend that people over the age of 50 who have what we say is 20 pack years of smoking history, meaning they've smoked a pack for about 20 years or two packs for 10 years, if they're over the age of 50, they and their physician should have a conversation about the potential risks and the potential benefits of lung cancer screening.

It is a complicated thing, and there are some risks associated with it.

Those who want to go forth with lung cancer screening and have access to good lung cancer screening should get a spiral CT on an annual basis, and those are the recommendations of the two major organizations in the United States.

Now, I stress this is for people who have an extensive smoking history because if we start doing screening of people who are non-smokers, you will find that a number of them will have some abnormalities that end up not being cancer, and they will end up basically being, um, inconvenienced.

... diagnosis?

I think the Holy Father is going to do very well.

Why was it important for you to be represented in this conversation?

Well, thank you very much.

I'm here representing the CEO Roundtable, and I'm also a professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Much of what I've done throughout my career is define what the cancer problem is and define what the problems are in disparities.

And the route to overcoming disparities involves a spectrum of prevention, appropriate screening, and appropriate diagnostics and appropriate treatment.

The way you actually start the prevention part of it is through lifestyle change.

And we need to work such that people are living a healthy life and doing healthy things at home, at play, and at work.

And so what are you seeing the city of Baltimore doing in supporting healthy outcomes for people who live there.

Dr. Brawley, I'm hoping you can, you can help us understand the state of cancer research and investment in the US before January 2025 and the new administration, and how you'd compare that to what you see today.

Yeah, thank you for asking that question.

You know, we have, uh, we need to focus on what we have gotten out of Nixon's war on cancer.

Uh, he signed the National Cancer Act in 1971.

As a result, uh, research, uh, just blossomed.

We totally redefined what cancer was, totally redefined our understandings of cancer, and that translated into improvements in prevention, improvements in treatment.

Cancer death rates in this country peaked in 1991, and going to 2022, we've had a 34% decline in cancer death rate.

Dr. Brawley, help us better understand how cuts to ongoing cancer research, like clinical trials, how could that affect patient care and treatment options?

Does it appear to you that cancer research is being implemented by that standard or that war on DEI?

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And some of it is just ridiculous.

Not long ago, a grant that involved transgenic mice got a cease and desist order from the federal government.

It was no longer going to fund this transgenic mice research because the people who were doing the cuts thought transgenic is transgender, right? Totally different.

Mice have very small gonads.

And Dr. Brawley?

Does it appear to you that cancer research is being implemented by that standard or that war on DEI?

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And some of it is just ridiculous.

Not long ago, a grant that involved transgenic mice got a cease and desist order from the federal government.

It was no longer going to fund this transgenic mice research because the people who were doing the cuts thought transgenic is transgender.

Totally different.

And Dr. Brawley?

And yet stick a

needle into it, the biopsy, it's a control stab into the person's chest.

You collapse the lung of a smoker and they die of a heart attack.

You put a scope down their throat and look into their bronchial tubes.

You provide them a little bit of oxygen and the end result is they have a heart attack.

Let's talk about lung cancer screening with spiral CT, which has actually been shown to be beneficial.

Let's look at the real numbers.

So how do you think about that?