WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Wednesday will announce a relaunch of the Cancer Moonshot program that was started during the Obama administration to end a disease that kills more than 600,000 people a year in the U.S., the White House said.
Biden’s revamped Cancer Moonshot aims to reduce the death rate from cancer by at least 50 percent over the next 25 years and improve the experiences of people diagnosed with cancer and their families, according to a fact sheet shared by the White House.
Biden is scheduled to make the announcement Wednesday afternoon in an event in the East Room of the White House, where he will be joined by Vice President Kamala Harris, the first lady and the second gentleman.
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In a call with reporters, an administration official said the initiative was deeply personal to both Biden and Harris. Biden lost his son Beau in 2015 to brain cancer, and Harris’ mother, a breast cancer researcher, died of colon cancer in 2009.
Biden previously oversaw the Cancer Moonshot program, which was announced during former President Barack Obama’s last year in office, and he later founded the Biden Cancer Initiative, a nonprofit organization dedicated to cancer prevention and research. The initiative closed in 2019 after Biden announced his White House bid.
An administration official said the Cancer Moonshot program was being revamped now because “a lot has changed that makes it possible to set really ambitious goals.”
Biden faces sagging approval numbers and an uphill battle to defend Democratic majorities in Congress in November. The outcome of the midterm elections could also affect future funding for the cancer initiative, which does not include new funding commitments.
Congress provided $1.8 billion for the Cancer Moonshot program in 2016, very little of which is left.
The Biden official said the administration is “very confident that there will be robust funding going forward,” arguing that few issues garner as much bipartisan support as cancer research.
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Biden on Wednesday will announce a new position, that of Cancer Moonshot coordinator in the White House, as well as a “Cancer Cabinet,” which will include such agencies as the departments of Health and Human Services, Defense and Energy, in addition to the Environmental Protection Agency. He also will announce plans to host a Cancer Moonshot summit at the White House.
The president and the first lady will urge more people to get screened for cancer, especially after millions of screenings have been skipped during the Covid pandemic.
Biden has spoken extensively about his experience losing his son to cancer and has said he wants to be the president remembered for ending the disease.
During a visit last year to Pfizer’s vaccine manufacturing facility in Michigan, Biden said, “I want you to know that once we beat Covid, we’re going to do everything we can to end cancer as we know it.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
