Joe Biden

Joe Biden to Direct Cancer Cure Effort in Last Year as VP

Vice President Joe Biden says he'll spend his final year in the White House working to double the rate of progress toward a cancer cure.

President Barack Obama tasked Biden with the mission in his State of the Union address Tuesday night. Biden says the goal is to make a decade's worth of advances in five years.

"Let’s make America the country that cures cancer, once and for all," Obama said at the State of the Union, earning a round of applause.

Biden says in a blog post that he'll work to do two things: increase public and private resources to fight cancer, and break down barriers to collaboration and information-sharing by researchers. He says the federal government will use funding incentives and increased coordination to accelerate research. He wants more sharing of medical and research data.

Biden says it's personal. His 46-year-old son died last year from brain cancer. Biden announced months later that he wouldn't run for president but would launch a "moonshot" to cure cancer. This is the first time he's laying out how he'll pursue that goal.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
Contact Us