The institutes will receive a total of $32.1 billion in 2016, an increase of 2 billion over the previous year, which includes an additional $264 million for cancer. Even though cancer killed almost 590,000 Americans previous year, death rates steadily have declined for more than a decade. “For the loved ones we’ve all lost, for the families that we can still save, let’s make America the country that cures cancer once and for all”. He says that call to action inspired science and innovation, and now he says curing cancer should be this generation’s “moonshot“.
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Genetic differences inside tumors help explain why one person’s cancer is more aggressive than another’s, and why certain drugs work for one patient but not the next, especially newer “targeted therapies” that are created to home in on certain characteristics.
“Takes the breaks off of the immune system that the cancer has so that your own immune system fights the cancer”, says William Hyman, a doctor with UT Health Northeast Oncology.
Though many Americans were asking one another, “What did he just say?” scientists and physicians in search of cancer cures were cheering.
“We are completely thrilled that President Obama has appointed Vice President Biden to spearhead a new thrust in cancer in our lifetime”, Dr. Willman said.
President Obama will soon announce an presidential memorandum allowing Biden to convene a task force in his push to speed up progress in the fight against cancer, the vice president said. “He said the industry has a long track record of finding breakthrough treatments to once-deadly diseases, including HIV/Aids, hepatitis C and ‘an ever-increasing list” of cancers.
Though the the National Cancer Institute will receive a $264mincrease in federal funding this year – an influx that Biden helped secure in December’s spending bill – researchers and policy advocates said that federal funding for medical research had fallen short for many years before that. A slow, steady wearing down of the opposition is no less a victory over cancer, he said.
Cancer researchers who met with Biden recently said he was intrigued by the possibilities for improving prevention and early detection.
As for the results, Biden, said, “I’ve never been so optimistic in my life”. This follows the death, from brain cancer, a year ago of Biden’s son Beau Biden.
Biden planned to continue the effort next week by convening global cancer experts at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Biden acknowledged that some cancers can’t be cured, insisting he wasn’t naive.
“We have a line of sight to make a decisive assault on the problem”, he said.
President Obama has mentioned cancer in all but one of his State of the Union addresses.
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“Then I think it is possible that over the next couple of years, we’re going to have more people with certain types of bad (cancers)… who are going to live (for a) prolonged high quality time in peaceful coexistence with their disease”.
