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On January 12 Pres. Barack Obama laid out an aspirational plan in his final State of the Union to “cure cancer.” He did not put forth a specific time line for this effort or the metrics that would measure success but did say that he was putting Vice Pres. Joe Biden in charge of “mission control.” And already, the White House released information about several meetings that Biden will hold to get the ball rolling on the initiative.
Yet is such a goal truly achievable in the near future? Patients and doctors know all too well that cancer is not one disease and there is no singular cure for the complex group of disorders. Biden did help secure a $264-million cash infusion in the most recent government spending bill that will support cancer work at the National Cancer Institute, but the obstacles to attacking cancer effectively are more than just financial. “A cure is a long way off,” but the prospect for some specific cancers does look bright, says James Allison, chair of the Department of Immunology at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. For his part, at least Allison was not surprised about the announcement, he says, because the vice president himself called him and other researchers within the past two months to talk about cancer research. And now, unlike even five years ago, a 10-year remission is realistic for cancers like melanoma, which seemingly were unbeatable.
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