[Comment] Establishing a Lancet Oncology Commission on the humanitarian crisis of cancer

The idea for this Lancet Oncology Commission on the humanitarian crisis of cancer emerged in 2022 in response to the shared concerns of a group of clinicians, scholars, and health policy leaders about the growing imbalance in the attention and resources directed to the biomedical and technological aspects of cancer care, compared with its humanitarian dimensions.1 It was clear that enormous resources had been invested in biomedicine in the 50-year-old “war on cancer”, a global quest for its cure launched by an act of legislation in the USA.