Time Is Right for Obama’s Ambitious Cancer ‘Moonshot’

The intensified research effort, which Obama said would be led by Vice President Biden, may instead be more like a swarm of fighter jets scrambling to take on numerous adversaries in an ever-changing battle. He said the issue is “personal” to him after the loss of his 46-year-old son, Beau, Delaware’s former attorney general, to brain cancer on May 30.

Vice President Joe Biden gestures toward President Barack Obama’s during the president’s State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016. Biden wrote that his goal is “to double the rate of progress”, and while the details of doing so are still sketchy, Biden laid out two main goals: increase resources both private and public to cancer researchers; and improve communication between scientific and health communities.

In December 2015, the USA federal statistics for 2014 showed that the main causes of death in the United States were identical to 2013: cardiovascular disease, cancer, respiratory diseases, accidents and unintentional injuries, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, flu, pneumonia, kidney disease and suicide. “We’ll be in good shape.'” Biden said Obama said “promise me you won’t sell the house”, and “I’ll give you the money”. “The goal of this initiative – this “Moonshot” – is to seize this moment”.

When it launches this summer, the Genomic Data Commons will be able to hold data from as many as 50,000 patients and clinical trial participants, including genomic analysis of their cancers, the treatments used, their responses and outcomes, Lowy said. “To make a decade worth of advances in five years”, Biden posted on social media during Obama’s address.

He said his government had worked to keep the internet open and make it available to “more students and low-income Americans”.

Associate Professor Mark Pershouse says he hopes the President’s call for action is real.

“There are a number of areas where we can contribute, and we’re anxious to do that”, he said. “I’ll head to the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine to talk to their physicians and researchers and continue this national dialogue”.

“I’m behind Joe Biden if they can help and he can find a way, they can help cure cancer, why not?”

The US Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) and the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) support the administration’s plans.