Desperate presidential hopeful Joe Biden has made a promise on Tuesday to “cure cancer” if he defeats incumbent President Donald Trump in 2020, and a scientist has slammed him for giving false hope and saying dumb things.
“I promise you if I’m elected president, you’re going to see the single most important thing that changes America — we’re gonna cure cancer,” announced Biden during a campaign speech in Ottumwa, Iowa.
That’s one hell of an election promise. The problem for Biden is that he cannot possibly guarantee that he will fulfill it.
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There are more than 100 types of cancer and it is unlikely Biden’s scientists could establish a single cure for them all.
In 2016, Biden headed the “Cancer Moonshot” program during the Obama administration in a renewed effort to find a cure for cancer. He also launched the Biden Cancer Initiative after leaving office.
Independent reports: After leaving office in 2017, he established the non-profit Biden Cancer Initiative as “a response to the lack of a cohesive, comprehensive and timely approach to cancer prevention”.
Mr Biden’s vow to end cancer unsurprisingly raised eyebrows on social media, where some accused him of giving people “false hope”.
Science journalist and geneticist Rob Arthur said Mr Biden’s vow was a “lofty goal but a dumb thing to promise”. He added: “There is not and for the foreseeable future cannot be a single ‘cure for cancer’. Cancer is an incredibly heterogeneous disease – breast cancer is not like brain cancer is not like leukaemia, and no cure would work on all of them.”
