Vice President Joe Biden took to a new media outlet Wednesday to super-charge his cancer “moonshot” initiative.
“If you plan to launch a pioneering collaboration aimed at breaking down a barrier that is impeding progress in cancer research, prevention, diagnosis, treatment or care, I’d like to hear about it,” Biden wrote on Medium. “I want to hear how this disease has touched your life,” he added as he linked to a repository for such ideas and stories on the White House website.
“I want to hear your big ideas,” he continued. “Don’t assume someone is already thinking about it.”
Biden said he’s looking for help from every sector.
“Whether you represent industry, government, a health system, nonprofit, philanthropy, research institute, professional society, patients or others, I want to hear from you,” he wrote.
President Obama tapped Biden to lead the government-directed effort to squeeze 10 years of cancer research and advances into five years, after highlighting the initiative in his final State of the Union speech.
When Biden opted out of the presidential race last fall after losing his oldest son, Beau, to brain cancer, he called for a “moonshot” to cure cancer, relating the idea to President Kennedy’s ambitious challenge to NASA to place a man on the moon within the decade.
“And I believe we need a moonshot in this country to cure cancer,” Biden said from the Rose Garden on Oct. 21. “It’s personal. But I know we can do this … And I’m going to spend the next 15 months in this office pushing as hard as I can to accomplish this.”
Biden’s post was timed with one from National Cancer Institute Director Dr. Doug Lowy, in which he explained how the public and private sectors are forging ahead.
“[W]e must recognize that accelerating progress does not mean that cancer will be gone in five years and that we still need a great deal of research to increase our knowledge of cancer and deepen our understanding of the mechanisms by which new treatments work, how to combine them and how to overcome drug resistance,” Lowy wrote.
