Superpower cancer summit is cancelled
Joint conference for US and UK leaders is axed
A HISTORIC meeting between US and UK leaders to jointly turbocharge ways of beating cancer has been quietly dropped, it was revealed yesterday.
The “superpower” summit was to follow up a meeting of experts from each nation last year.
But the planned face-to-face meeting between President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Liz Truss has been abandoned as “unnecessary”, officials have said.
Last night, a UK Government spokesman said it was not needed, adding: “An expert summit between US and UK scientists to bolster cancer research collaboration was held in November last year to great success.
Moonshot
“This will in due course be followed by a report setting out the UK-US ambitions around cancer research, responding to commitments made by UK and US leaders.”
Last year’s virtual conference brought together leading scientists from the US and UK to identify solutions that will change the treatment of cancer as we know it.
A political summit was set to be held in the spring, building on US and UK scientific strengths and putting cancer research at the top of the international agenda. But it never happened, and seemingly now never will.
The impetus behind a joint approach to tackling cancer came after former PM Boris Johnson’s meeting with President Biden at the G7 Summit in Cornwall last year.They challenged the cancer research community to identify the most important areas for collaboration between the two countries.
The cancellation comes just weeks after President Biden launched a bid for a “cancer moonshot” to slash death rates by 50 per cent in the next 25 years.
Cancer Research UK has called on the Government to make commitments to improve treatment and prevention.
The charity’s executive director Iain Foulkes said: “This is the dawning of a golden age for cancer research.
“But to ensure the pipeline of global collaborations continues, we need to make sure the UK’s research base – which was disrupted by the pandemic – is fully supported as it recovers.
“The Government has an ambition for the UK to be a science superpower.To make this a reality it needs to join with us to invest in life-changing research.”