Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden announced what can only be described as an ambitious goal when he pledged to foster the mass reduction of cancer cases and deaths from cancer over the next quarter-century.
Through the relaunch of the Cancer Moonshot program, which Biden enacted late in his vice presidency, the president set a twofold goal: cut the cancer death rate by 50% and improve the lives of people being treated for cancer.
“And our message today is this: We can do this,” Biden said at a ceremony in the East Room of the White House. “I promise you we can do this. For all those we lost, for all those we miss, we can end cancer as we know it.”
The Moonshot program in its current form is void of concrete actions. The White House did offer a lengthy fact sheet that outlined general plans – among them forming an advisory cabinet, hosting a summit, facilitating easier cancer screening, and encouraging private and public sector players to adopt an “all-hands-on-deck” approach – but mentions of specific allocations or strategic planning were sparse.
One of the White House’s immediate goals is to collect the stories of cancer patients and survivors as well as input from the public about which steps to take next. The administration has set up electronic submission forms to gather these stories on a dedicated page at WhiteHouse.gov.
Biden mentioned that last year’s infrastructure bill contained funding that would prove useful in the fight against cancer but did not elaborate on how that money would be spent. Rather, the president and first lady each championed American medical advancements as signs of hope.
“We are living in a golden age of research and discovery,” Jill Biden said at the ceremony. “We can end this terror, and all of us have a role to play.
“Because this isn’t just about hoping that one person will decipher the answers alone; it’s about listening to patients and survivors and their families, and easing the burden they face.”
Unlike so many issues in the U.S., cancer has long proved to be the great uniter, both in policy and, sadly, in people affected. As such, for perhaps the first time in his presidency, Biden introduced a plan that could garner wide bipartisan support.
“[This] can really be an American moment that proves to ourselves and, quite frankly, to the world that we can do really big things,” Biden said. “You know, we’ve made enormous progress in the past 50 years since Congress passed … and President Nixon signed into law the National Cancer Act.”