The Emergence of a New Interdiscipline: Oncofertility

In 1971, the National Cancer Act was signed, providing funds to the newly established National Cancer Institute (NCI) to coordinate research and new medical advances to detect, diagnose, and treat cancer. Since then, there has been a steady increase in the number of cancer survivors, reaching 3.5% of the domestic population in 2003. The rise in the number of survivors is due to earlier detection of disease, aggressive radiation therapy, and new chemotherapeutics. Thus, while the suffering and death associated with cancer have not been eliminated, cancer has been converted, in some cases, from an acute death sentence to a disease that many people survive and live with for an extended period of time.