Children’s Cancer Is Unprofitable and Ignored
An estimated 2,000 children die of cancer each year, and the overall incidence of childhood cancer has been slowly increasing since 1975. Despite significant advances against certain pediatric cancers, including acute lymphoblastic leukemia, there are still some types of cancer for which there are few or no effective treatments. As John London found out, new drug development in the field is slow, often lagging way behind adult treatments, and few compounds are designed specifically for children. “I was on my own, as many parents are,” London says. “The medical community had no interest.”