President Obama puts Biden ‘in charge of Mission Control’ to cure cancer

In his final State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Obama was widely said to have conceded to his lame-duck status and an atmosphere of paralyzing political partisanship by avoiding ambitious initiatives.

Researchers at the Van Andel Institute have been working to find ways to cure cancer for some time. “This is truly going to be Houston’s gift to the world”.

“You need to work on the bad cancers”, said Pershouse. But they also understand that fighting cancer is not a one-year thing.

“I’m an eternal optimist, but I’m not going to go around saying we’re going to cure cancer in five years”.

A separate coalition announced this month, called Cancer Moonshot 2020, aims to hold clinical trials for up to 20 tumor types, in as many as 20,000 patients by the year 2020.

How far are we from eradicating cancer now?

Just last week, the American Cancer Society said that cancer death rates had dropped 23% over the last two decades.

It’s a bold statement, and one very personal to any Americans affected by the disease. Surgery can fix some skin cancers. Childhood leukemias have essentially been cured, as has testicular cancer. Advances in screening have helped detect breast cancers earlier which can then be cured.

He deemed that particular brand even more vexing than the rest. The latest congressional budget included a boost in funding for medical research.

Vice President Joe Biden fleshed out his plans to take the lead on a global effort to bolster cancer research, hoping to unite industry and academia to push new therapies forward.

Meehan was joined at the State of the Union by President and CEO of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Madeline Bell. I mean, they’re the people that I really admire.

Naming the vice president to head the effort demonstrates commitment, experts said. “We know we have the science, we know we’re beginning to see the progress”, Baylin said.

Dr. Jonathan Friedberg, director of The University of Rochester’s Wilmot Cancer Institute, agrees. Still, the more new compounds we test out, the better chance we have of finding something that works.

Schilsky says there’s broad agreement the nation could speed up the development of new cancer treatments if researchers could get their hands on larger data sets.

“He said, ‘I’m not afraid, Dad, ‘” Biden recalled.

He gets applications from scientists from all around the world.

The human cost – of loved ones lost or suffering – can not be estimated. “With the genetic markers this can narrow down what drugs are available which can defeat the cancer which I have”. A government initiative to encourage collaboration would go a long way. Brawley thinks that will help. I think one of them is that just within the last decade or so, technologies have enabled us to learn the nature of cancer itself, right?

Varmus also said making reimbursement a priority, especially from Medicare and Medicaid, will also be key. A slow, steady wearing down of the opposition is no less a victory over cancer, he said. (It hasn’t passed the Senate.) “This tradition of bi-partisan support for medical research is longstanding”, said Collins.