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Cancer

Working harder to fight cancer

Joe Biden, vice president of the United States of America, on a visit to the Cancer Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, in January 2016

Official White House Photo/David LienemannJoe Biden, vice president of the United States of America, on a visit to the Cancer Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, in January 2016Official White House Photo/David Lienemann

On January 28, 2016, President Barack Obama of the United States announced that he was setting up a task force to be headed by Vice President Joe Biden to boost cancer research. The objectives are to have the various funding agencies work together and trim bureaucratic difficulties. The president had submitted the initiative to the U.S. Congress on January 12, 2016. “We will be the country that will cure cancer once and for all,” Obama believes. He compared the program to putting a man on the moon. Obama said that Beau Biden, the vice president’s son who died at age 46 of brain cancer in May 2015, was one of the reasons for the new plan. “I don’t claim to be a cancer expert. But I do have something to offer when it comes to being a catalyst and bringing folks together,” Biden wrote in his blog. The vice president underscored problems that have to be addressed, such as low patient participation (5%) in clinical trials of new treatments. Another challenge he pointed out was that physicians have limited access to the most recent scientific advances.

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