Reaching Target: Ending Cancer as We Know It
Taken together, these current efforts and future plans signify an initial down payment for accelerating gains in preventing, diagnosing, and treating cancer — that is, aiming to achieve 10 years of progress in half the time. Ultimately, through the creation of new paradigms for generating, sharing, and integrating research and clinical data to enhance patient care, the Cancer Moonshot can accelerate the delivery of effective cancer prevention strategies, diagnostics, and treatments to patients in communities around the world.
The effort isn’t about scientific research or technology development; it isn’t about computational power or capability; it isn’t about health care records management — these are simply the innovative strategies and tools we now have to deploy in the fight against cancer. The Cancer Moonshot is about the entire cancer ecosystem working together to use our resources and tools intelligently and aggressively to catalyze improvements in care and our understanding of cancer.
This is the “moonshot” for our time. In 1961, President Kennedy called on the Nation to “commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” Similarly, President Obama and Vice President Biden are calling on the Nation, and the world, to unite around a common mission — to harness our vast scientific and technological capabilities to dramatically change the incidence of cancer and the experience and outcomes of cancer for patients, keeping the needs of patients at the center of it all.
Together, we can end cancer as we know it.
Read previous chapter:
Lifting Off: Cancer Moonshot Implementation Plan
Read next:
Why Now?
Download the full Cancer Moonshot Task Force report.
