Biden in Davos urges Trump to press cancer fight
Vice President Joe Biden said his “prayer” is that the incoming Trump administration will continue to support the fight against cancer, which kept Biden from running for president after it took the life of his son, Beau, the Delaware attorney general, in 2015.
Biden was speaking Monday before the start of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to promote his “Cancer Moonshot” initiative. He hailed bipartisan support in Congress for a bill that passed last year, allocating $1.8 billion for additional cancer research at the National Institutes of Health.
Biden said he had spoken with Vice President-elect Mike Pence about his willingness to work with the new Trump administration to help it be as “committed and enthusiastic as we are in the goal of ending cancer.”
He urged other countries to also invest in the fight against cancer and called for greater collaboration among researchers, health care providers and drug firms.
Biden has previously said that he will be starting an organization, which may be called the Biden Cancer Initiative, to change the way the nation conducts cancer research and development and provides care to those with the disease.
Biden wants the initiative to focus on improving data standards to help researchers, work with community care organizations to improve access to care and push pharmaceutical companies, insurance providers and biotech companies to ensure patients can afford treatments.
To Biden, it’s crucial that patients have access to their own data, and that providers and researchers better share their findings.
Reporting for CBS News from Davos, Switzerland: Lulu Chiang, Lauren Hoenemeyer and Gilad Thaler