Abstract

President Nixon declared war on cancer in 1971. When a president of the USA declares a presidential project, he has the determination to achieve the goal in 5 years. There were two precedents: the Manhattan Project of President Roosevelt and the Apollo Project of President Kennedy. In both precedents, nuclear physicists and rocket engineers were successful to achieve the presidential project within 5 years. Health profession failed the challenge during the 5 years of intensive presidential support, and in the following 44 years of earnest public expectation. Is it so difficult to put cancer away? Yes, as we have pointed out previously [1], that in theory it was not possible to solve cancer with conventional cell killing strategies, because cancer stem cells (CSCs) stood in the way. And no, there were other ways to get rid of CSCs and to solve problems confronting cancer [2,3].