Vice President Joe Biden Introduces Cancer Research Milestone

United States Vice President Joe Biden on Monday urged health professionals to treat cancer, the second leading cause of death in the country, as an urgent concern.

As reported by Bloomberg, Biden told the members of the American Society of Clinical Oncology during its recent annual meeting: "[When] we were worried about Ebola, we were able to aggregate tens of millions of dollars and the entire US military because the World Health Organization couldn't handle it." He added that this kind of urgency should also apply to cancer, which is also a major cause of deaths in the United States.

Aside from the US government's effort National Cancer Moonshot Initiative unveiled earlier this year, Biden also announced that there is a public databased that can boost cancer research. The database is available at the University of Chicago that has "vast troves of genomic data" considered helpful in the challenging field of cancer research. The said database will somehow make things easier as information can be easily accessed whenever needed.

In his speech, the Vice President added: "No single oncologist or cancer researcher can find the answer on his or her own. It requires somewhat of a change in mindset. It requires more openness: open data, open collaboration, and above all, open minds."

Dr. Deborah Mayer, meanwhile, one of the doctors working on the moonshot, claimed that there has been progress in cancer research recently. Cancer patient survival, for instance, has increase from 30 percent in year 1950 to 68% in year 2010.

In an interview with BBC News, she said the moonshot will enable experts to detect cancer cases early on that can increase the chances of the patients' survival. The initiative also enables cancer doctors to warn their patients when needed and help them inform the public on how to prevent the disease.