Cancer will be his cause, Biden tells conference
With less than two weeks left in office, Vice President Joe Biden told health care leaders in San Francisco on Monday that he has “genuine reason for open optimism” about the state of cancer research — a special cause to him since his son’s death in 2015.
Biden has led the Cancer Moonshot Initiative since it was announced by President Obama last January in his final State of the Union address. Over the past year, Biden worked to secure a $6.3 billion funding bill for cancer and other health research that was approved by an overwhelming majority in the Senate last month.
That bill will help guarantee that the work he started continues long after he’s left office and a new administration has taken over the White House, Biden said Monday at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, speaking before hundreds of health care providers and investors at the Westin St. Francis hotel at Union Square.
Biden made few remarks about the incoming administration, and none on President-elect Donald Trump specifically. He said he hoped his successors wouldn’t gut the Affordable Care Act — which is already under threat of demolition by the new Congress — to the detriment of the health of patients who depend on it.
He’s also counting on the new administration, and especially Vice President-elect Mike Pence, to continue Biden’s own work on cancer focus and funding.
“I stand ready to help any way I can,” Biden said, before adding lightly that he hadn’t yet heard from Pence’s team. “He’s had his hands full putting together a government.”
Earlier Monday at an event hosted by StartUp Health, a tech accelerator that is exploring similar “moonshot” initiatives in other health areas, Biden told a standing-room crowd that he was excited to see so many young scientists and entrepreneurs showing an interest in cancer research. He hoped his aggressive plans would appeal to a new generation.
Peering out over the audience, he noted, approvingly, that there were only a few “old men” in the room. Then he encouraged the young people there to challenge the dated system of funding and research.
The current system “rewards seniority and pedigree over innovation,” Biden said. “You all have an overwhelming skepticism for orthodoxy. You know in order to make new things, you must break the old things.
“The work you’re doing gives me a lot of hope,” he added. “Don’t let the old system hinder the intellectual capacity, the dreams, the hopes you all possess.”
Biden is fond of saying, as he did at both events Monday, that his one regret about choosing not to run for president — a decision he made not long after his son, Beau Biden, died of brain cancer at age 46 — is that he “won’t be the president who presides over the demise of cancer.”
Biden already has announced that after leaving the White House he will, among other things, create a nonprofit agency to continue his work in cancer. But in addition to just looking at research, he wants to tackle thorny issues like access to care, drug pricing and health disparities. He’d also like to encourage sharing among researchers and push for better use of electronic records and big-data analysis.
“I’m going to spend the rest of my life doing this,” he said.