Last Friday, President Joe Biden said the next target is to end this deadly disease completely. As already the USA is battling with covid 19 outbreak, and once they overcome this pandemic, their administration will do everything to end cancer.
Ned’s Vision On Ending Cancer As We Know It?
In the US, cancer is the second leading cause of death; according to the report by the National Centre for Health Statistics, around 600,000 people died due to cancer in 2019, and 1.9 million newly diagnosed cancer cases were registered this year.
Beau Biden, son of Joe Biden, also died at the age of 46 due to brain cancer. For a better understanding of how cancer will end, Ned Sharpless, the director of the National Cancer Institute, gave an interview with the USA today. He says that the development of cancer research in this current year is called a golden age; all the theories and hard work from a year ago are now paying off for cancer patients.
They asked about deadly cancer treatment and prevention tips, Ned said, by saying ending cancer as we know it, President Biden does not mean to eliminate all cancers, it’s not possible because it depends on the biology linked with aging and cancer, he simply meant that we have to work on reducing the mortality of death due to cancer, especially for aged people.
Later he said about the deadly cancer treatment that still they have to do so much research to find the cure. Ned said about prevention that one could prevent the outcome if the patients are not healthy and not involved in exercises; NCI recommends that staying healthy and applying a healthy lifestyle may prevent you from cancer.
Then they ask about the screening process and what advanced technology is for this. According to Ned, cancer screening can create a problem because some people live in remote areas. But as new technologies are going to be introduced, which are blood-based and can detect 10-50 cancers at the same time in the same person.
People aged 50 and above should get screening done, and according to that, they easily get treatment without any delay. The next questions were about immunization and cancer care therapy, Ned said, till now, there are only four ways to treat cancer: radiation, surgery, chemotherapy, Immunotherapy.
Out of this, Immunotherapy is very important as for some cancer patients; it is the only treatment they get. About cancer care, it delivers its promise very efficiently and helps up to 10%-20% recovery from cancer.
At last, they asked how NCI is contributing to this cause, and they got answers from Ned that they use cloud mounting, data dictionaries for collecting the data, and so that they could get the idea about the numbers and start treating the patients with the best alternatives.
Another role played by NCI is that they will give the treatment to the patients via different trial procedures; for example, in breast cancer, they can give less chemo and could get the same results. President Biden already allowed the administration to start working on the research work, and for that, NCI is going to spend $ 500 million on the research work for the study of what are the health barriers which decrease the health of the United States.