Joe Biden talks Cancer Moonshot at Cleveland Clinic innovation summit

Biden speaks in Cleveland

Vice President Joe Biden shakes hands with Dr. Toby Cosgrove, CEO of the Cleveland Clinic, as he is introduced at the Clinic's Medical Innovation Summit Monday morning. Biden spoke about his Cancer Moonshot initiative to a large gathering of doctors, IT and healthcare experts.

(David Petkiewicz, cleveland.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio--Vice President Joe Biden opened this year's Cleveland Clinic medical innovation summit with a talk about what he deemed "the only bipartisan thing left in the United States of America"-- the fight against cancer.

Speaking about his Cancer Moonshot initiative, launched in January, Biden told a roomful of doctors, healthcare executives and entrepreneurs that for millions of people across the country affected by cancer, this work is urgent.

"They're not asking to live, they're not asking to be cured," he said. "They're asking for one more moment, and it matters. It matters a lot. Every damn moment counts. And every moment we delay matters."

Biden spoke at the Cleveland Clinic innovation summit, which focuses on innovations and their ability to improve all aspects of the healthcare industry. It runs Monday through Wednesday, Oct. 24th to 26th.

The Moonshot Initiative, introduced by President Barack Obama in his 2016 State of the Union address, aims to make a decade's worth of progress in cancer research in five years.

Biden, whose son, Beau, died of brain cancer in 2015, is leading the effort.

"He has turned his personal tragedy into a benefit for millions," Clinic CEO Toby Cosgrove said in introducing Biden.

In a morning Q & A with Steven Krein, CEO of StartUp Health before Biden's speech, Cosgrove said he doesn't think that cancer will soon be eradicated, but does think many types of cancer will become "manageable, chronic diseases." StartUp Health has the mission of improving health care globally through a network of innovators and entrepreneurs.

Biden was decidedly more optimistic. He said he believes that all the right ingredients are in place for a major leap forward in the understanding, treatment and prevention of cancer.

"We can do virtually anything," he said. "Your children are going to see more progress in the next 15 years than we've seen in the last 75 years."

Biden reiterated the importance of collaboration, prevention and investment in sharing and aggregating patient data.

The Vice President lamented the healthcare industry's failures that led to his son's doctors needing to take cell phone photos of MRI images to send to each other, due to the inability of many hospital systems to share patient records.

"Can you imagine any other company in the world working that way?" he asked.

Biden also came down hard on researchers who fail to report the results of cancer-related clinical trials in a timely manner, calling this "unconscionable." Federal rules that become effective in January 2017 will require researchers to publicly report results of many clinical trials of experimental treatments for ailments such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease, even if they're not published.

"From now on the 60 percent of you that don't share this data on time, you're going to get fined $10,000 a day," Biden said. "That's a promise."

This was Biden's second Cleveland visit to talk about the Moonshot. He spoke at the Langston Hughes Community Health and Education Center in the city's Fairfax neighborhood in June. Today, he'll stay in Ohio to campaign for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

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