President Biden is zeroing in on the policy goals closest to his heart now that he's no longer seeking a second term, visiting New Orleans on Tuesday to promote his administration's "moonshot" initiative aiming to dramatically reduce cancer deaths. The president and first lady Jill Biden toured medical facilities that receive federal funding to investigate cancer treatments at Tulane University. Researchers used a piece of raw meat to demonstrate how they're working to improve scanning technology to quickly distinguish between healthy and cancerous cells during surgeries. The Bidens then championed the announcement of $150 million in awards from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, per the AP. Those will support eight teams of researchers around the country working on ways to help surgeons more successfully remove tumors from people with cancer.
It brings the total amount awarded by the agency to develop breakthrough treatments for cancers to $400 million. Cancer surgery "takes the best surgeons and takes its toll on families," Biden said. He said the demonstration of cutting-edge technology he witnessed would offer doctors a way to visualize tumors in real time, reducing the need for follow-on surgeries. "We're moving quickly because we know that all families touched by cancer are in a race against time," Biden said. The teams receiving awards include ones from Tulane, Dartmouth College, Johns Hopkins University, Rice University, the University of California-San Francisco, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the University of Washington, and Cision Vision in Mountain View, California.
Before he leaves office in January, Biden hopes to move the US closer to the goal he set in 2022 to cut US cancer fatalities by 50% over the next 25 years, and to improve the lives of caregivers and patients. "I'm a congenital optimist about what Americans can do," Biden said. "There's so much that we're doing. It matters." Experts say the objective is attainable—with adequate investments. "We're curing people of diseases that we previously thought were absolutely intractable and not survivable," said Karen Knudsen, CEO of the American Cancer Society. Cancer is the second-highest killer of people in the US after heart disease. This year alone, the American Cancer Society estimates that 2 million new cases will be diagnosed and 611,720 people will die of cancers. More here.
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