Biden: ‘Let’s end cancer as we know it’

President Biden on Wednesday called the “cancer moonshot” initiative a priority of his White House during an event announcing the relaunch of the program.

“Let there be no doubt. Now that I am president, this is a presidential White House priority — period,” he said during remarks at the White House.

He called the relaunch a “supercharge” of the cancer moonshot and an essential effort of his administration. The program is personal for Biden and launched while he was vice president after his son Beau Biden died of glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain cancer, in 2015 at the age of 46.

Details: The initiative is focused on efforts to diagnose cancer sooner by increasing access to ways to screen for cancer, with a focus on equity and addressing inequities across race and region.

Biden argued on Wednesday that there is too little known about why treatments work for some patients but not for others with the same diagnosis. And he argued that patients usually want to share their data to help others.

He issued an official call to action, asking those who missed their screenings during the COVID-19 pandemic to go and get a screening. There were more than 9.5 million missed cancer screenings in the U.S. as a result of the pandemic, according to the White House.