President Joe Biden wants to halve the age-adjusted cancer death rate over the next 25 years and improve the lives of patients, survivors, and their families through a rebooted White House cancer moonshot project, an effort he first launched as vice president.
The president and first lady Jill Biden are expected to announce the goal and encourage people to book cancer screenings, some missed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, during a White House event Wednesday.
BIDEN TRIES TO COUNTER CRITICISM OF HIS RECORD ON CRIME
Biden’s latest cancer moonshot will cover detection, prevention, and treatment while addressing inequities in service access and delivery. The White House will also form a cancer Cabinet and host a summit and roundtable conversations as Biden reestablishes executive leadership in the area.
But a senior administration official denied that Biden was abandoning his campaign promise to cure cancer, despite the official not using the word during a background call with reporters or in supplementary White House materials.
“I don’t think they said we’re going to cure all cancer all at once. But you cure cancer by curing them one at a time, a patient at the time, 100 patients at a time,” the official said. “No walking back but using words carefully and precisely so that we can hold ourselves accountable.”
Another cancer-pandemic link is the possibility of applying COVID-19 medical and scientific advances to cancer, according to the senior administration official. “There’s a lot of thinking right now” about whether an mRNA vaccine similar to the Pfizer and Moderna shots can be developed that recognizes and attacks cancer cells, the official said.
Roughly $400 million remains of the $1.8 billion over seven years Congress authorized for cancer research in 2016. The official only said they were “very confident that there will be robust funding going forward.”
“In these times of disagreements, there’s certainly one thing on which we all agree on across party, across everything, which is the effect of cancer on their lives,” the source said.
Biden’s first moonshot was launched in 2016 during former President Barack Obama’s final year in office. Specifically, the project aimed to expedite a decade of progress in five years by bringing together public, private, nonprofit, and academic stakeholders.
After former President Donald Trump’s election, Biden continued his work through the Biden Cancer Initiative, which he founded to encourage research collaboration and enhance patient care before stopping it to run for the White House.
Biden’s reigniting the moonshot coincides with his legislative priorities stalling on Capitol Hill. West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, a crucial vote for Biden’s $2 trillion social welfare and climate spending legislation, declared the bill “dead” Tuesday.
Biden lost his eldest son, Beau, to glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer, in 2015 when Beau was 46 years old.
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“We only have one regret: He’s not here,” he said of Beau on Inauguration Day. “We should be introducing him as president.”
