What to know about Joe Biden's Cancer Moonshot
Former President Biden is being praised following his prostate cancer diagnosis for his efforts in spearheading Cancer Moonshot, an initiative that's designed to improve treatments and combat rates of the disease.
The big picture: Former President Obama, who appointed Biden to lead the drive a year on from his son Beau Biden's 2015 death from brain cancer, said after it was announced that his VP has an aggressive for of cancer that's spread to his bones: "Nobody has done more to find breakthrough treatments for cancer in all its forms than Joe."
State of play: The Obama White House announced Cancer Moonshot in 2016 "to eliminate cancer as we know it" and kickstarted the national program with $1 billion in research funding.
It became known as the Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot Initiative.
Biden relaunched Cancer Moonshot in 2022 with the goals of reducing the age-adjusted death rate from cancer by 50% over 25 years and "making a decade's worth of progress in cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment in five years," per a National Cancer Institute post.
Tens of millions in funding has gone toward cancer programs since then, including $150 million last year to develop technologies that the Biden White House said would help with tumor-removal surgeries.
Cancer Moonshot has "supported 250 research projects and more than 70 programs and consortia," according to a National Cancer Institute (NCI) post that was last updated in April.
What he's saying: "After Beau died, I literally visited every major cancer research facility in the world — seven of them around the world. I wanted to see what was possible, and I did," then-President Biden said last September, according to recorded remarks of his speech before world leaders and scientists to announce the Quad Cancer Moonshot in his home state of Delaware.
"They're making significant progress," Biden said after the Quad heads of state from the U.S., Australia, Japan and India committed to the drive. "And it's not just because it's personal — this —but it's because it's possible," he added.
"Our goal is to team up, end cancer around the world, and start — starting with cervical cancer. I know it may sound unrealistic, but it's not."
How it worked: "Funded through the 21st Century Cures Act, the Cancer Moonshot brought together patients, advocates, researchers, and clinicians dedicated to utilizing resources across the government, academia, and the private sector," per the NCI.
Using a panel of experts' broad recommendations as a guide, NCI said it "identified goals that would reflect this guidance and accelerate discovery, increase collaboration, and expand data sharing across the cancer community."
Among the accomplishments the NCI lists the Cancer Moonshot achieving are expanding prevention drives, developing "new enabling cancer technologies to characterize tumors and test therapies" and intensifying research into the leading causes of childhood cancers.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
2 hours ago
- New York Post
Why Israel's attack on Iran is Netanyahu's legacy-in-the-making
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has proven, yet again, that he's the ultimate master of both political indifference — and unpredictability. Nearly a year after he cannily took advantage of America's Biden-Harris political vacuum to dismantle Hezbollah in Lebanon, Netanyahu is finally taking out Iran's nuclear armament sites following months — even years — of will-he-or-won't-he brinksmanship. And it comes as the Knesset, Israel's parliament, teetered on the brink of dissolution all week over the specter of compulsory military service for ultra-Orthodox men. 5 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking to his nation early Friday morning as Israel began its attack on Iran's nuclear sites. GPO/AFP via Getty Images Advertisement As Netanyahu begins a potentially weeks-long campaign against Tehran, the stakes could not be higher for both Israel and its longest-serving prime minister. Springtime has seen his veneer of invulnerability finally begin to crumble. In May, President Trump skipped Jerusalem during a tour of the Middle East that saw him strike billions of dollars worth of deals with Israel's Arab neighbors. Meanwhile, back at home, after 20 months of war with Hamas, Israeli soldiers have begun to openly refuse to serve in Gaza — an act of defiance as heretical as it is treasonous. Advertisement 5 The attack came following a week of conflict in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, over the specter of compelling Ultra-Orthodox Jews to serve in the military. AFP via Getty Images Traditional allies such as Canada, Australia and Great Britain have begun sanctioning Israeli ministers while France has even indicated it could soon recognize a Palestinian state. In Syria, Israel is still battling Islamist terrorists despite regime change in Damascus; Yemen's Houthis continue to target Israeli civilian sites — while in Gaza, Netanyahu has turned to arming local Palestinian clans to help finally eradicate Hamas. And so, Iran and Operation Rising Lion. Israel scored impressive successes in its initial assaults on Iran, eliminating key members of its military leadership and heavily damaging crucial military bases, among them, Iran's trio of nuclear facilities. No Israeli aircraft were lost during these opening volleys, which included a Mossad drone base operating from inside Iran. And none of Iran's retaliatory drones managed to penetrate Israel's missile defense systems. Israel may be effectively closed to air travel and Israelis sequestered at home — but early Friday's military assault has been compared by many to 1967's Six-Day War in its audacity and effectiveness. Advertisement 5 An IDF solider in Gaza, where war has raged for over 20 months. On Friday, Israel announced a new round of reservist soldiers were being called up to fight. AFP via Getty Images But this is just the beginning. Both Netanyahu and Trump have indicated Rising Lion could extend for days, if not weeks. It won't be enough for Israel to merely 'hit' Iranian nuclear sites such as Natanz and Tabriz, it must render them incapable of enrichment to truly claim 'mission accomplished.' That will require repeated assaults — along with the massive 30,000-pound 'bunker-buster' bombs supplied by the US. Trump has made clear his support for Israel's operation, describing it as 'excellent' on Friday morning. But the US is not directly participating in Rising Lion, And Trump has warned Iran that Israel's next wave of assaults could be 'even more brutal' than the first in a push toward concession and deal-making (the status of Sunday's bilateral talks in Oman remain uncertain). With Washington so enmeshed in finding an Iran 'solution,' Trump may be unable to keep the US from joining Rising Lion, particularly if Iran's next round of retaliatory strikes prove especially brutal. 5 An arial image of Iran's Natanz Nuclear Facility, which Israel hit hard. Airbus/Google Earth / SWNS Advertisement Ultimately, however, Netanyahu's toughest test won't be in Washington or Tehran, but in Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem. Having avoided a dissolving of the Knesset that would have led to new elections, Netanyahu can focus squarely on the Iran crisis. And for the moment, Israelis appear united around their prime minister, with both Knesset majority and opposition figures praising the nation's soldiers. But Friday saw yet another call–up of military reservists, further straining a civilian population worn down — if not worn out — from months of conflicts in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon. Hours later, hundreds of Iranian missiles hit Israel amid wave after wave of retaliatory strikes. Three Israelis were killed and some 150 were wounded, a miraculously modest number, however tragic. But more attacks are almost certain and future numbers could be severe: White House envoy Steve Witkoff privately described an Iranian counter-campaign as a potential 'mass-casualty' event of an extent never witnessed in the Jewish state. For many Israelis, the war in Gaza — and Israel's military campaigns across the Middle East — are proof that Netanyahu is committed not to protecting the Jewish people, but to the 'forever war' that will keep him from facing his myriad legal scandals or a possible re-election defeat. 5 Scenes of devastation in Teheran, which is likely to endure new attacks by Israel in the coming days. ABEDIN TAHERKENAREH/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock The prime minister may be indifferent, if not immune, to a world increasingly committed to isolating him. But if Operation Rising Lion fails to eventually come down to Earth, Israel's Iran gamble — even if it defangs Tehran's nuclear ambitions — could finally prove Netanyahu's undoing. dkaufman@
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Have Presidents Grown Too Powerful To Be Removed From Office?
The cover-up of President Joe Biden's cognitive decline is a scandal "maybe worse than Watergate," CNN's Jake Tapper opined recently. In this case, the key question is: "What didn't the president know and when didn't he know it?" Last week the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee ramped up its efforts to answer these questions. Citing Tapper and Alex Thompson's book, Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, The committee's chairman, Rep. James Comer (R–Tenn.), issued demand letters to five senior Biden aides and subpoenaed the White House doctor who certified that the president was fit for duty. He clearly wasn't. Even in 2020, Biden struggled to feign lucidity in tightly scripted Zoom town halls. "He couldn't follow the conversation at all," said top Democrats who saw the raw footage; it "was like watching Grandpa who shouldn't be driving." The four Cabinet members who spoke with Tapper and Thompson described equally scripted Cabinet meetings with a president incapable of answering pre-screened questions without the aid of a teleprompter. One recounted being "shocked by how the president was acting" at a 2024 meeting: "'disoriented' and 'out of it,' his mouth agape." One campaign adviser asked himself after a post-debate conversation with Biden: "What are we doing here? This guy can't form a fucking sentence." Put more politely, the president was "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office"—just cause for removal. "This is why we have the 25th Amendment," Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) said recently, "it's clear now that it probably should have been invoked from the beginning." That key players instead propped up a semiconscious figurehead, hoping to gaslight their way to reelection, isn't just a scandal—it's a constitutional failure. That failure reveals an uncomfortable truth: As the presidency has grown ever more powerful, even manifestly unfit presidents have become nearly impossible to remove. Ratified in 1967, the 25th Amendment provides two ways the vice president can get the keys from a nonfunctioning president. Under Section 3, the president hands them over voluntarily; under Section 4, the VP can take them away when he or she and a majority of the Cabinet determine that the president is incapacitated. Section 4 was meant to cover cases of "mental debility," as one of the amendment's architects, Rep. Richard Poff (R–Va.), explained, where the president "is unable or unwilling to make any rational decision…particularly the decision to stand aside." Top of mind was avoiding a replay of the Woodrow Wilson debacle. Leveled by a pair of strokes in 1919, the 28th president spent the remainder of his term bedridden and incommunicado while first lady Edith Wilson essentially ran the executive branch of the government. "We dare not let that happen again," Rep. Emanuel Celler (D–N.Y.) warned during the House debate over the 25th amendment. Yet it arguably just did. In the six-decade life of the amendment, Biden's presidency is as close as we've come to the paradigmatic Woodrow Wilson case, complete with a latter-day Edith Wilson—Jill Biden—and a clique of advisers the Biden staff dubbed "the Politburo." An inert president may sound like a libertarian dream. Alas, it's not as if nothing gets done while he's checked out. The New York Times calls concerns about heavy use of the autopen a "conspiracy theory." But if reports from the Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project are accurate, it's at least interesting that, from mid-July 2022 on, most executive orders issued by the administration were signed remotely, even when Biden was in Washington. Despite the Politburo's efforts to conceal the president's decline, the Cabinet knew. At any point, the vice president and eight Cabinet-level "principal officers" could have moved to replace him via Section 4. Why didn't they? For one thing, the 25th Amendment's "eject button" is almost impossible to trigger: Even broaching the possibility risks crashing the plane. Any single Cabinet member who disagrees could "short-circuit the process by informing the President, potentially triggering a cascade of firings." (Something similar happened in 1920, when Wilson's secretary of state, Robert Lansing, was forced out for suggesting a transfer of power to Vice President Thomas Marshall.) Another problem is that even with the support of the Cabinet, it was unclear whether Vice President Harris could garner enough GOP votes in Congress to ratify the switch. Without a supermajority of both Houses, Biden would come back from time-out and the firing frenzy would begin. According to Tapper and Thompson, the 25th Amendment solution was never even considered. Instead, the Politburo's reigning calculus was that Biden "just had to win and then he could disappear for four years—he'd only have to show proof of life every once in a while." Meanwhile, the same people hoping to defraud the electorate subjected the rest of us to lectures about threats to "our democracy." Worse still, it isn't just the 25th Amendment that's broken. The Constitution provides another method for ejecting an unfit president before his term is up: the impeachment process. In the last five years, we've pressure-tested both failsafe mechanisms. Neither one worked. In his first term, President Donald Trump was impeached twice, the second time for provoking a riot while trying to intimidate Congress and his own vice president into overturning the results of an election he lost. Even that enormity didn't earn him conviction and disqualification in the Senate trial. The fact that we've never managed to eject a sitting president via the impeachment process suggests that the framers set the bar for removal—conviction by two-thirds of the Senate—too high. For Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, which requires a supermajority of both houses, the bar is even higher. Lowering the bar to an impeachment conviction—say, to 60 votes—would better protect the public from an abusive president. It would also provide security against a future Biden/Wilson scenario. Though impeachment aims primarily at abuse of power, it was designed as a remedy for presidential unfitness generally: "defending the community against the incapacity, negligence, or perfidy of the Chief Magistrate," as James Madison put it. Properly understood, that covers cases of "mental debility." Of course, that reform faces a dauntingly high bar of its own: It would take a constitutional amendment, the prospects for which are dim. But making presidents easier to fire is only one way to tackle our fundamental problem; the other is to shrink the job. "Incapacity, negligence, and perfidy" in the presidency are bigger threats than ever, because presidents now have the power to reshape vast swaths of American life. They enjoy broad authority to decide what kind of car you can drive, who gets to use which locker room, who is allowed to come to the United States, and whether or not we have a trade war with China—or a hot war with Iran. That's more power than any one fallible human being should have. Making the presidency safe for democracy will require a reform effort on the scale of the post-Watergate Congresses: reining in emergency powers, war powers, the president's authority over international trade, and his ability to make law with the stroke of a pen. It's a heavy lift, but worth the effort. If we're worried about the damage unfit presidents can do, we should give them fewer things to break. The post Have Presidents Grown Too Powerful To Be Removed From Office? appeared first on
USA Today
2 hours ago
- USA Today
Army 250th anniversary parade: tanks and thousands of troops take to DC streets: Live updates
Army 250th anniversary parade: tanks and thousands of troops take to DC streets: Live updates Show Caption Hide Caption Military equipment headed to DC ahead of Trump's birthday parade Battle tanks, fighting vehicles and infantry carriers departed Texas for D.C. for President Trump's military parade. Tanks, armored vehicles and thousands of soldiers will march through the streets of Washington, D.C., to celebrate the Army's 250th anniversary in a massive, expensive and controversial military parade on June 14 – also President Donald Trump's 79th birthday. Helicopters and World War II-era warplanes will fly overhead and Army parachutists will soar down to the White House's ellipse, where Trump will preside over the parade from a presidential booth. A day-long program of Army-organized activities and music is scheduled before the parade begins at around 6:30 p.m. Critics say the $40 million parade represents an alarming politicization of the military and bears eerie resemblance to military parades held by North Korea or Russia. Thousands of "No Kings" protests against Trump, the parade, and his ongoing immigration crackdown are also scheduled across the country. Although weather forecasts predict possible thunderstorms on the evening of June 14 in the nation's capital, the Trump administration has not announced any contingency plan for a rained-out parade. Saturday's parade might may also draw attention to Trump being the oldest commander-in-chief in U.S. history. Born June 14, 1946, when Harry Truman was president, he set the record for oldest person to take office at 78 years and 7 months, ahead of Joe Biden, who was 78 years and 2 months when he took office in January 2021. The age of American elected officials has been a topic of concern lately, mostly due to questions raised around Biden's acuity that hounded him for most of his term. Democrats have tried to do the same to Trump, such as when he mixed up the Japanese car company Nissan and the Japanese steel company Nippon last month. "He is not the same person that I dealt with just four years ago, and he's incapable of even a train of thought," California Gov. Gavin Newsom said of Trump in a recent interview. But that narrative hasn't stuck to Trump, who is known to ramble in public speeches but comes off as more vigorous to the public than Biden did. — Phillip M. Bailey Washington's weather forecast for the day of the parade shows a high of 83 degrees, with showers beginning in the late morning and possible thunderstorms after 2 p.m. local time. After 6 p.m., when the parade will kick off, forecasters predict a 75% chance of precipitation and some chance of thunder. The Army said on June 13 that the weather is "being closely monitored and taken into consideration, but at this point nothing has changed." More than 1,800 "No Kings" protests against the parade, Trump, and what protesters call his authoritarian policies, are scheduled in cities and towns throughout the world – but not Washington. Trump first said on June 10 that protests would be met with "very big force." The White House backtracked days later, and press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump "of course" supports peaceful protests. Other demonstrators have kept their plans in Washington on the day of the parade, with some fearing a crackdown like the response to protests against widescale deportations in Los Angeles.
