'Moonshot Is All Of You:' Joe Biden Hosts Summit For Cancer Research, Innovation
WASHINGTON (CBSNewYork/AP) —Vice President Joe Biden says the world of cancer research needs a change in culture so that progress toward cures won't be stifled.
Biden is hosting a daylong summit Wednesday at Howard University in Washington as part of his ``moonshot'' to try to cure cancer. He's calling out drug companies for unnecessary price increases and pressing the need to remove bureaucratic hurdles.
Scientists, oncologists, donors and patients gathered Wednesday at Howard University for the daylong event. Comedian Carol Burnett, whose daughter died of cancer, introduced Biden.
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"He knows cancer, he lived through cancer and he sees that if we fight it together, we can have a world without cancer as we know it," Burnett said of Biden. "I'm with you, Vice President Biden -- we all are."
For Biden, the conference comes as time is running out to make good on his pledge to double the rate of progress toward a cure before leaving office.
"Moonshot is all of you -- all these people across the country jumping in to help prevent, change lifestyles...it's all those people spending nights and weekends in their labs looking for the next breakthrough. It's the patients who are being treated for the cancers hoping they can return to their lives and their families," Biden said.
Biden is also threatening to cut off federal funding to clinical studies that fail to report their findings publicly within the time required by the government. He says that just slows progress.
Still, Biden says the world is "on the cusp of breakthroughs.''
After his son, former Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, died of brain cancer last year, the elder Biden announced he wouldn't run for president.
In a September appearance on "The Late Show," Biden told host Stephen Colbert he was still experiencing moments of uncontrollable grief that he deemed unacceptable for a presidential aspirant. "Sometimes it just overwhelms you," he said, foreshadowing his ultimate decision.
He said he'd spend his remaining months in office on a cancer "moonshot."
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