Washington, DC — Dylan Scott reports in STAT that Vice President Joe Biden’s cancer “moonshot” is in serious jeopardy following Donald Trump’s election, but there may be hope for it yet.
The president-elect hasn’t said anything about the initiative, launched by the Obama administration earlier this year, and his aides didn’t reply to multiple requests for comment.
But the lame-duck Congress is making a last-ditch effort to pass a medical innovation bill that would provide hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for the effort.
And if that money is approved before Trump is inaugurated, there might not be anything the new president could do, even if he wanted to stop it.
“This is not all about Donald Trump,” Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said at a recent briefing in Washington, discussing several medical research projects started under President Obama. “Programs once they’re started have an inertia.”
The president-elect hasn’t said anything about the initiative, launched by the Obama administration earlier this year, and his aides didn’t reply to multiple requests for comment.
But the lame-duck Congress is making a last-ditch effort to pass a medical innovation bill that would provide hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for the effort.
And if that money is approved before Trump is inaugurated, there might not be anything the new president could do, even if he wanted to stop it.
“This is not all about Donald Trump,” Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said at a recent briefing in Washington, discussing several medical research projects started under President Obama. “Programs once they’re started have an inertia.”
Supporters are putting their hopes in the lame-duck legislation for the same reason.
The vice president, for his part, stressed the importance of the moonshot when he met privately with his successor, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, according to people familiar with the meeting.
For Scott’s full story, click here.
Follow STAT — which reports from the frontiers of health and medicine — on Twitter @statnews.
Follow Scott on Twitter at @dylanlscott.
The vice president, for his part, stressed the importance of the moonshot when he met privately with his successor, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, according to people familiar with the meeting.
For Scott’s full story, click here.
Follow STAT — which reports from the frontiers of health and medicine — on Twitter @statnews.
Follow Scott on Twitter at @dylanlscott.
