By Zeke Miller and Carla K. Johnson -
The Associated Press
The president, Joe Biden, will paraphrase his predecessor John F. Kennedy on Monday on the 60th anniversary of his speech on the first trip to the Moon, to highlight and reinforce his government's efforts with the aim of "ending cancer as it is". as we know it."
Biden will highlight in Boston a new study that federal authorities are preparing to detect several types of cancer in early stages through a blood test.
This tool could radically improve the detection of tumors, but it also plans to announce other measures to improve the health of patients.
Biden's speech at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library comes at a time when he is trying to get the entire country to help advance the development of therapies and drugs for a disease, the second leading cause of death in the country after heart conditions.
Biden hopes to get closer to his goal of reducing deaths by 50% in the next 25 years and drastically improving the lives of patients and those who care for them.
Biden, in a speech in Boston on September 12, 2022. Evan Vucci / AP
Danielle Carnival, coordinator of the White House cancer plan, told The Associated Press news agency that she sees great potential in blood tests that "offer the promise of detecting multiple types of cancer with a single blood sample. ".
"We think the best way to do that is to put the technologies we have today to the test and see what works and what has a real life-prolonging impact," Carnival added.
The American Cancer Society estimates that 1.9 million cases of cancer are diagnosed: more than 610,000 people will die from these types of diseases in 2022.
It's also a personal matter for Biden
, who lost his son Beau in 2015 to a brain tumor.
A year later, with Biden as vice president in the White House, Congress passed the 21st Century Cures Act, which dedicated $1.8 billion over a seven-year period to treatment research.
[Fauci believes the COVID-19 vaccine will need to be updated annually]
The Apollo program, launched by Kennedy to reach the Moon, had a cost that would now be equivalent to 220,000 million;
Biden's initiative against cancer, despite the president's comparisons, is more modest, with less than 1,000 million over several years (although it will depend on how much the private initiative contributes).
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Experts agree that it is too early to know whether blood tests for various types of cancer will have the desired effect in reducing deaths.
Although no studies have yet been carried out to prove this, they do indicate that setting such an ambitious goal is important.
These studies are expected to take about a decade, but they are designed so that the results can be put into practice while long-term research proceeds.
Its ultimate goal is to develop a tool that reduces the need for more invasive tests such as colonoscopies, thus promoting and facilitating prevention and saving lives.
Some doctors believe it will be possible to get closer to Biden's goal of cutting cancer deaths in half in a quarter-century.
"We can hit that 50% target by slowing down a number of cancers enough, without actually curing them," Berry said, "if I had to bet on whether we can do it, I'd bet on yes."
Dr. Crystal Denlinger, chief of science for the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, an association of several elite cancer centers, said much can be done to fight cancer if access to therapies and drugs is democratized.