Cancer and Capitalism: Rise of the Cancer-Industrial Complex and the Horizons of Care

A bold rethinking of what cancer is as a biological phenomenon, the science that serves capitalism, and a radical vision of liberated health and well-being.

More than fifty years after the declaration of the War on Cancer, and billions of dollars spent, we are nowhere close to victory. The answer to the question of why we are losing lies in the very way cancer is understood and the ＂cancer-industrial complex＂ that has been established to address it. Just as the term ＂industrial complex＂ has been used to explain a profiteering relationship between public entities and private corporations, the cancer-industrial complex arises from the symbiosis of private corporations, non-profit organizations such as universities and foundations, and public governmental regulatory bodies in the post-genomic era. This network profits off a vulnerable population who does not have the same footing in a market that is structurally rigged against them given their physical and socioeconomic conditions. This extortion takes place under the auspices of scientific research and technological progress, much of which is well-meaning.

It is the tragedy of our capitalist realism that even as we understand the insidious nature of the cancer-industrial complex, we must still participate within its confines. Cancer and capitalism brings the cancer-industrial complex to the front of our understanding of what cancer is, the chronic nature of the disease, and its unmistakable parallels to capitalism, its inextricable link to the neoliberal model of economic development, and its disproportionate burden on non-white and poor populations--and what it will really take to rid ourselves of the gravest dangers to our well-being, individual and societal.

Trained as a cancer scientist, Nafis Hasan offers both a clinical and critical reading of current narratives of cancer research, the socioeconomic and political conditions of preventing us from a cure, and offers an visionary alternative theory about carcinogenesis--one that counters the dominant neoliberal idea of mutations causing cancer, is anti-reductionist, and centers a dialectical approach to understanding the biology and sociology of cancer. As Hasan states, ＂If we must fight the longest war, then it should be the war against capitalism, one that has metastasized in every aspect of our society and ourselves.＂

Nafis Hasan received his PhD in Cell, Molecular and Developmental Biology from Tufts University in 2019. After a brief stint as a Postdoctoral Scholar in David Kaplan’s lab at Tufts’ Dept of Biomedical Engineering, he currently works in the labor movement in PA. He is also an Associate Faculty at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. His research interests range from cancer biology to climate politics and eco-Marxism; his writings have appeared in Jacobin, Science for the People, The Trouble, and more. He serves as an editor for the radical science magazine Science for the People and Jamhoor, a critical left media org focused on South Asia, and organizes with the Democratic Socialists of America.