One goal is to cut cancer death rates by 50 percent.
President Joe Biden on Wednesday, Feb 02, 2022, relaunched the White House's "Cancer Moonshot" initiative, committing the nation to working toward reducing the death rate from cancer by at least 50% over the next 25 years.
The ambitious effort has two main goals: to reduce the cancer death rate by 50 percent over the next 25 years and to improve the lives of people with cancer and their families.
"We can do this. 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," Biden said in remarks at the White House.
Cancer is still the No. 2 killer of Americans. It has been for decades, and Biden started the work to change it when he was vice president. Biden’s son, Beau, died in 2015 at age 46 from brain cancer.
The White House announcement points to a few strategies to meet those goals, like diagnosing cancer sooner. President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will encourage people to get regular cancer screenings, the White House will push for more access to home screenings, and federal agencies will work to develop tests that can screen for multiple cancers at once. The effort will also look into ways to prevent cancer, like reducing environmental exposures to cancer-causing pollutants, and accelerating research efforts that use mRNA technology to push the immune system to attack cancer cells.
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