Experts say that to really make a difference on cancer, Biden will have to overcome the grandiose “moon shot” expectations he created for himself and continue the effort far past the end of his term. | Getty Biden launches moon shot for a cancer cure The VP has first high-level meeting with cancer researchers in Philadelphia.

Vice President Joe Biden conferred with cancer researchers in Philadelphia on Friday, chairing his first high-level meeting since adopting the cause of curing the disease as his personal mission in the Obama administration’s fourth quarter.

Few dispute the worthiness of the goal. But experts say that to really make a difference, Biden will have to overcome the grandiose “moon shot” expectations he created for himself and continue the effort far past the end of his term.


In remarks to doctors at the University of Pennsylvania’s Abramson Cancer Center, Biden said he expects the president to issue an executive order shortly that would put all federal agencies and departments at his disposal. He added that he recognizes that defeating cancer is a long-term undertaking.

“My commitment is not for the next 12 months," Biden said. "I’ve been stunned by response worldwide … I plan on doing this the rest of my life.”

Biden first called for a “moon shot” for a cure when he announced in October that he wouldn’t run for president, still grieving over his son Beau’s death from brain cancer five months earlier. President Barack Obama embraced the mission and the metaphor at Tuesday’s State of the Union Address, saying he was putting Biden “in charge of mission control.”

It’s not the first time Obama has charged Biden with tackling a difficult policy problem, and so far he seems to be following the same playbook as when Obama put him in charge of another administration priority: enacting new gun control measures following the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The gun effort quickly ran aground; background check legislation died in the Senate four months later.

Cancer researchers who have already met with Biden and his staff say they don’t like the whole “moon shot” analogy — curing the diverse set of diseases we call cancer is more about small steps than giant leaps, they say. But they welcome the effort, saying that Biden’s skills as convener and collaborator, cajoler and cheerleader could make a lasting difference in accelerating research.

Biden is “a man with a big vision, who’s got a motivation that a lot of people across the country share, unfortunately,” said Mary Woolley, CEO of Research!America. “He’s made a statement: we can do it.”

Woolley added, “We know, after all, that we have strong public support to cure cancer and Alzheimer’s and diabetes. What’s been lacking is the political will over the past decade-plus.”

Following the roundtable at UPenn, Biden plans to discuss cancer with international researchers at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, next week. Later this month he’ll hold the “first of several meetings” with Cabinet heads and agency officials to discuss how the federal government can play a bigger role.

While Friday’s meeting was the first time the vice president has invited the media along, the cancer moon shot effort has been ramping up for months.

During the State of the Union address, Obama credited Biden with helping push Congress to increase funding for the National Institutes of Health (the division that does cancer research saw a particularly big boost). That prompted chants of “Joe! Joe! Joe!” in the House chamber.

Biden counselor Don Graves, who previously led the White House’s effort to restore Detroit from bankruptcy, appears to be his point man on cancer, and already the vice president or his staff have met with over 200 researchers, philanthropists and doctors.

Biden doesn’t always attend meetings in person; he was in Wilmington, Delaware, last week while his staff met with 15 members of the American Association of Cancer Researchers. But he has been personally engaged, participants say. MD Anderson Cancer Center President Ronald DePinho, for example, said he’s had several one-on-one conversations with Biden over the past year in which they’ve discussed three priorities of the vice president: cancer control, early detection and immunotherapy treatments.

Biden also hosted a gathering at the Naval Observatory on Dec. 5 that included both government officials from the Food and Drug Administration and NIH and pharmaceutical industry bigwigs.

It’s a lot like what he and his aides did in the months after the December 2012 shooting in Newtown, Conn. They met with over 200 groups in pursuit of a “consensus,” a sort of lowest-common-denominator set of policies that would mark a win for gun-control advocates without activating the National Rifle Association's aggressive opposition. But by the time Biden finished with all those meetings, gun control advocates said, the emotional pull of the slayings of 20 6-year-olds had faded.

But there’s not the same sort of political deadline for ending cancer deaths — and there’s certainly no “anti-cancer cure" lobby analogous to the NRA. Biden’s reputation as a tireless listener and relationship builder could genuinely help bring together researchers who share commitment and common goals but haven’t always cooperated well, researchers say.

“There’s a system already working on this, of course,” Ellen Sigal, chair of Friends of Cancer Research, a think tank and advocacy group, said. “But there isn’t a coordinated effort. We do lived in a siloed world.”

If anything, Biden’s “moon shot” analogy is his biggest misstep so far. It’s already prompted grumbling among scientists and a New York Times headline splashed that his effort “relies on outmoded view of disease.” On Friday, Biden even said he almost wished he hadn’t used the lofty phrase. And some experts feared there would be consequences if the effort fails to meet unrealistically high expectations.

A better analogy might be putting together puzzle pieces, said Benjamin Corb of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

“Only, you don't know what the final picture is supposed to look like, nor do you know if you even have all the pieces,” he said in an email. “You don't even know if the piece you just found actually fits in THIS puzzle or in a different one.”

Corb added, “Scientists are scared that, if they're unable to piece the puzzle together, does Congress start coming at them and saying, ‘All this money and still no cure?’”

In his October Rose Garden speech declining a run, Biden said, “If I could be anything, I would have wanted to have been the president that ended cancer, because it's possible.”

His commitment posted on Medium on Tuesday was more modest, if still ambitious: ”to double the rate of progress. To make a decade worth of advances in five years.”

Graves joined other federal officials on a conference call on Thursday to give reporters a more down-to-earth description of the effort.

“The faster progress is not going to take care of the cancer problem in the next month, the next year or even in the next couple of years,” said National Cancer Institute acting director Doug Lowy. But given the genuine advances in genetics and immunology, the opportunities for progress, he added, “are enormous at this time. We really applaud the vice president for his commitment and what we know will be equally important, his follow-through.”

Even as the president expressed confidence in Biden, Obama also threw cold water on the idea that cancer deaths will end anytime soon.

“It probably won’t be cured in my lifetime,” Obama told a fourth-grader at a town-hall event in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Thursday. “But I think it will be cured in yours. And that's why we got to get started now.”

Brett Norman contributed to this report.