Proclamation 3836—Cancer Control Month, 1968

This year, more than 900,000 Americans will be treated for cancer, and more than 300,000 will die.

Medical science will save 200,000 cancer patients in 1968. But another 100,000 persons, who might have been saved by earlier treatment using the skills we now possess, will be lost.

Cancer continues to be our second deadliest disease—and the affliction people fear more than any other.

Progress against so formidable an enemy has been slow, but significant. Our research has led to many encouraging achievements:

—The survival of many children with acute leukemia for periods of two to three years, and in some instances five or more years, gives us renewed hope that this terrifying disease can be conquered.

—More than 50 percent of patients treated with intensive doses of X-ray for localized Hodgkins disease have been cured.

—New techniques, involving the concentration of drugs in brain tumors, have stimulated the search for better drugs to treat these cancers.

—Malignant tumors of the eye have been cured in many patients by combined radiation, surgery, and drug treatment, without loss of useful vision.

The incidence and death rates for cancer, however, continue to increase. We must redouble our support of the scientists, physicians, and health agencies who are battling this malignant public enemy.

To impress upon our people the urgency of the cancer problem, a joint resolution of Congress adopted March 28, 1938 (52 Stat. 148), requested the President to issue annually a proclamation setting aside the month of April as Cancer Control Month.

Accordingly, I, Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the month of April 1968 as Cancer Control Month; and I invite the Governors of the States, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and other areas subject to the jurisdiction of the United States to issue similar proclamations.

I also ask the medical and allied health professions, the communications industries, and all other interested persons and groups to unite during the appointed month in public reaffirmation of this Nation's efforts to control cancer.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this nineteenth day of March, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-eight and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninety-second.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON