Cancer Scientists Lament Funding, by Marilyn Chase: “Leading U.S. cancer scientists say that five years of flat federal funding of cancer research is threatening to undo major strides made against the disease. Nancy Davidson, president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, said researchers had experienced a $500 million decline in real spending during “the longest sustained period of flat funding” in memory. She spoke during a news conference Friday opening ASCO’s annual meeting…John Niederhuber, director of the National Cancer Institute, a unit of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., said his organization’s $4.8 billion fiscal-2008 budget — the main engine of federal funding for cancer research — has remained in an “unbelievably flat trough since 2004.”