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e Moonshot was the latest salvo in a war on cancer that began when American troops were still on the ground in Viet Nam. Although Congress authorized the National Cancer Institute as part of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1937, and later incorporated the agency into the National Institutes of Health, both the military language of the “war on cancer” and its rise as a matter of serious political concern originated in the Nixon Administration. In his 1971 State of the Union Address, President Richard Nixon declared, “e time has come in America when the same kind of concentrated eort that split the atom and took man to the moon should be turned toward conquering this dread disease. Let us make a total national commitment to achieve this goal.” What followed was the National Cancer Act of 1971, a law that both reorganized

continue to die each year of cancer—as many as perished in World War II, Korea and Viet Nam combined. In 2003, the head of the National Cancer Institute, Andrew Von Eschenbach, claimed that an additional $600 million in annual funding could eradicate cancer by 2010. Needless to say, that did not happen. While patients had beneted from major breakthroughs in the treatment of certain cancers, like some leukemia and lymphomas, mortality rates for others, like pancreatic adenocarcinoma, remained largely unchanged. Yet the highly public battles of long-serving Senators Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania against cancer, and the publication of Siddhartha Mukherjee’s e Emperor of All Maladies , a comprehensive, Pulitzer-Prize winning history of the war on cancer and its shortcomings, created a groundswell of renewed interest in the struggle.

Shortly aer announcing the Cancer Moonshot in his State of the Union address, an eort modeled on President Kennedy’s successful pledge to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s, President Obama established a task force in the Oce of the Vice President to recommend a new battle plan in the ongoing war on cancer. e eort also led to the creation of a blue ribbon panel of scientic experts, co-chaired by Dr. Tyler Jacks of MIT, Dr. Elizabeth Jaee of Johns Hopkins and Dr. Dinah Singer, Acting Deputy Director of the National Cancer Institute, whose seven working groups addressed specic research challenges. As the panel’s nal report noted, “e Cancer Moonshot has brought the entire cancer community, industry, and patients and families together

GREG SIMON

government eorts against the scourge and funded een new cancer research centers. Nixon’s eort made curing cancer a national priority—at least in theory. e following four decades have certainly witnessed signicant advances. Public health initiatives to drive down tobacco use and widespread screenings, such as mammography and colonoscopy, prevented countless cancer diagnoses and premature deaths. On the treatment front, researchers identied the genetic origins of cancer, most notably oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes, while treatments advanced for some cancers to include targeted monoclonal antibodies and novel immunotherapies. By 2016, the federal government was spending $5.2 billion annually on cancer research. Yet for all of those eorts and advances, approximately six hundred thousand Americans

in a way that we haven’t seen before.” A Cancer Moonshot Summit occurred June 2016, drawing four hundred thought leaders to the nation’s capital and another 7,000 participants to three hundred local gatherings to brainstorm and exchange ideas. Even in a Washington beset by gridlock, lawmakers proved willing to take action. “e only bipartisan thing le in America is the ght against cancer,” Biden told audiences at the SXSW festival in 2017. One short-term product of the Moonshot was passage of the 21st Century Cures Act, bipartisan legislation signed by President Obama on December 13, 2016, that included $1.8 billion in new funding for the “Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot” as well as more controversial provisions designed to speed drug approval. When the Vice President le oce, he established the Biden Cancer Initiative to continue the eorts of the Moonshot

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