President Joe Biden said Friday that once the coronavirus pandemic is defeated, his government will turn to another deadly disease: cancer.
“I want you to know that once we defeat Covid, we will do everything we can to end cancer as we know it,” Biden said in a speech following a tour of Pfizer’s massive coronavirus vaccine manufacturing site in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the US, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, with nearly 600,000 people dying from cancer in 2019. Nearly 1.9 million new cancer cases will be diagnosed in the US by 2021, American Cancer Society researchers estimate.
One of Biden’s sons, Beau Biden, died of an aggressive form of brain cancer at the age of 46.
Biden said two White House offices, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and the Office of Science and Technology Policy, will be involved in the development of “advanced research on cancer and other diseases.”
Dr. Eric Lander, the director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University, will lead both offices together, Biden said.
The president compared the initiative to DARPA, the Pentagon agency charged with testing new technologies.
As a presidential candidate, Biden had proposed the creation of such an agency as part of his platform’s “Made in America” shelf. His campaign website called it the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H.
The then-candidate Biden reportedly brought up the proposal regularly during private campaign fundraisers, although he rarely spoke about it at public events.
Biden’s forward-looking announcement seemed to send the message that his government has tightened its grip on the pandemic.
That message was underscored by the location where he chose to deliver it: a 1,300-acre vaccine manufacturing site where millions of doses of Pfizer’s Covid vaccine are produced, packaged, frozen and shipped.
“We are now at a point where we have seen that the average daily number of people vaccinated is nearly double since the week before I took office, to about 1.7 million people getting an average injection per day,” Biden said, adding : “We are on track to exceed my promise” to deliver 100 million shots in his first 100 days as president.
But “despite the progress, we are still in the teeth of a pandemic,” warned Biden.
He noted that new strains of the virus are emerging and that the US will soon exceed the grim milestone of 500,000 deaths from Covid.
“If there is one message that everyone in this country needs to reach, it is this: the vaccines are safe. Please, for yourself, your family, your community, this country, take the vaccine when it is your turn and available, said Biden.
Biden urged Americans to continue to take precautions for their health and safety, including washing hands, stepping back and wearing masks.
“Look, I know it’s uncomfortable, but you make a commitment when you do,” Biden said. “Everyone should do their part for themselves, their loved ones and, yes, their country. It’s a patriotic duty.”