Proclamation 4120—Cancer Control Month, 1972

America is now committed to an all-out attempt to find a means of controlling cancer.

Last December I signed the National Cancer Act of 1971, a landmark piece of legislation authorizing new Federal support for cancer research over the next three years. This will be a massive effort, perhaps the largest attack against a single disease in the history of man.

Medical breakthroughs cannot be bought or forced. But the two out of every three American families who are touched by cancer now have the assurance that everything that can be done by Government will be done to control this brutal killer.

As a means of giving continued emphasis to the cancer problem, the Congress, by a joint resolution of March 28, 1938 (52 Stat. 148), requested the President to issue annually a proclamation setting aside the month of April as Cancer Control Month.

Now, Therefore, I, Richard Nixon, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the month of April 1972 as Cancer Control Month, and I invite the Governors of the States and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the appropriate officials of all other areas under the United States flag to issue similar proclamations.

To give new emphasis to this serious problem, and to encourage the determination of the American people to meet it, I also ask the medical and allied health professions, the communications industries, and all other interested persons and groups to unite during this appointed time in public reaffirmation of our Nation's strong commitment to control cancer.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this fourth day of April, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-two, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred ninety-sixth.

RICHARD NIXON