Meghan McCain Says She’s ‘Heartbroken’ Over Massive Cuts To Brain Cancer Research
Meghan McCain said Tuesday she’s “absolutely heartbroken” to learn that the recently passed government spending bill wipes out an important source of funding to research glioblastoma, the brain cancer that killed her father.
“My fellow republicans – this is wrong,” the former co-host of “The View” wrote on social media, sharing information about Congress’ cuts to the Defense Department’s Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (CDMRP), which funds research into various cancers at the National Institutes of Health.
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“My father and millions of others have been treated there for Glioblastoma and other brain cancers with miracle doctors and nurses,” she said of her father, the late Sen. John McCain, who died in 2018. Glioblastoma treatments that have come out of NIH research constitute “nothing short of a miracle,” she continued.
“Some government spending is needed and appropriate – cancer research is one of them,” she said.
There is no known cure for glioblastoma, though research has found ways to shrink the tumors and extend patients’ lifespans. McCain died just over a year after his diagnosis in 2017.
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Last month, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACSCAN) noted that the continuing resolution bill passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump to avoid a shutdown involved a 57% cut to the CDMRP, totaling $859 million in spending cuts — with $185 million less going to cancer programs.
Glioblastoma, which received $10 million in the 2024 fiscal year, is one of four types of cancer that isn’t receiving any research funding under the new spending bill. Neither will kidney cancer, lung cancer and pancreatic cancer, which is one of the most aggressive and deadly forms of the disease.
ACSCAM President Lisa Lacasse thanked Meghan McCain for “amplifying the critical importance of cancer research” and urged Americans to sign a petition calling on Congress to stop cuts to research.
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Cancer researchers have also raised alarm over the Department of Health and Human Services, run by conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announcing last week that it’s cutting more than 10,000 jobs at the NIH and other government health agencies.
According to American Cancer Society CEO Dr. Wayne A. I. Frederick, the staffing cuts “will touch all points of the cancer continuum, from prevention to research, to treatment access and survivorship care, and could disrupt our nation’s ability to develop early detection tests and treatments for the more than 200 diseases we know as cancer.”
