42 U.S.C. § 285a–2 — Special authorities of Director

(a) Information and education program. (1) The Director must set up a program to collect, identify, analyze, and quickly share — through publications and other means — information on cancer research, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment, including how nutrition relates to cancer, with cancer patients and their families, physicians and other health professionals, and the public. The Director may take whatever action is needed to keep scientific information flowing between the Institute and the public, and between the Institute and other scientific and medical organizations, both in the U.S. and abroad. (2) In doing this, the Director must: (A) run public and patient information and education programs that help people lower their cancer risk, learn about early-detection methods and use them, cope with cancer if they get it, and improve their long-term survival; (B) continue and expand programs giving physicians and the public state-of-the-art information on treating specific cancers, and identify clinical trials that could help patients while advancing cancer knowledge; (C) assess how well state-of-the-art cancer treatments are actually being used in practice, and include that assessment in the required biennial reports; (D) run the International Cancer Research Data Bank, which collects, catalogs, stores, and — as much as possible — shares cancer research and treatment results from any country, for use by cancer researchers and clinicians in any country; and (E) use publicly available information systems, where practical, to share cancer research and treatment results. (b) National Cancer Program. In running the National Cancer Program, the Director: (1) must set up or support large-scale production and distribution of specialized biological materials and other substances used in cancer research, and must set safety standards for people who use them; (2) must, after consulting the Institute's advisory council, support research abroad by qualified foreign scientists that would benefit Americans, joint research between American and foreign researchers, and training of American scientists abroad and foreign scientists in the U.S.; (3) must, after consulting the advisory council, support education and training programs, including continuing education and lab and clinical research training; (4) must encourage and coordinate cancer research done by industry where a company has particular research capability; (5) may, after consulting the advisory council, hire up to 151 outside experts or consultants; (6) may, after consulting the advisory council, (A) acquire, build, improve, repair, run, and maintain labs and other research facilities and property; (B) give grants for building or renovating facilities; and (C) lease or otherwise acquire buildings in or near Washington, D.C. for up to 10 years; (7) may, after consulting the advisory council, appoint advisory committees of private citizens and federal, state, and local officials to advise the Director; (8) may sign contracts, leases, and cooperative agreements with public agencies or private parties as needed to carry out the Director's duties; and (9) must, regardless of the Institute's normal budget process, submit an annual budget estimate — including projected staffing needs — directly to the President for review and forwarding to Congress, after giving the Secretary, the Director of NIH, and the advisory council a chance to comment (though their comments cannot change the budget). Experts hired under paragraph (5) get paid or reimbursed for travel and related expenses under Title 5, but only if they agree in writing to serve the full assignment or one year, whichever is shorter — unless they are separated or reassigned for reasons beyond their control that the Director accepts. If an expert breaks that agreement, the government can recover the money it spent on their expenses as a debt, though the Secretary may waive some or all of that recovery. (c) Pre-clinical models to evaluate promising pediatric cancer therapies. (1) The Director of the National Cancer Institute must expand, intensify, and coordinate the Institute's research into preclinical models that predict which therapies will work for treating pediatric cancer. (2) The Director must coordinate this work with similar work by other national research institutes and NIH agencies that also deal with pediatric cancer.