Vice President Joe Biden visited the city Thursday to promote an issue that's deeply personal for him and for so many other Americans: cancer research. NY1's Bree Driscoll filed the following report.
Nearly a year after his son Beau Biden died of brain cancer, Vice President Joe Biden joined doctors and nurses at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The topic was cancer research and improving access to treatments and information.
"If I have any regret about not running I would have liked to be the president to preside over ending cancer as we know it," Biden said.
This visit was part of the vice president's National Cancer Moonshot Initiative. He's been traveling the country, pressing for new treatments to attack and ultimately cure cancer.
"There was going to be all the firepower we could possibly bring to this issue to try and promote more rapid movement, more rapid change, more rapid progress," Biden said.
Biden asked the panelists for ideas on expanding the sharing of information so doctors and patients can access the latest research. He also focused on how to help cancer patients who do not live near hospitals providing the most cutting-edge treatments.
"How do we get information that is available here at Memorial Sloan Kettering to a community oncologist in Elmira, New York? How do we get the information that is at Hopkins to southern Delaware in Sussex County?" Biden said.
The head of Memorial Sloan Kettering said doctors from his hospital and other top cancer centers meet twice a year to update treatment guidelines. The goal is to create a uniform standard of care across the country. But the effort has its limits.
"We are facing a tsunami of new information being updated every day about that, and a paper record recommendation is just no longer to suffice," said Craig B. Thompson, president and CEO of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
"I think if you want to change cancer as we know it, I think the root of it always comes back to supporting research," said Jill O'Donnell-Tormey, CEO of the Cancer Research Institute.
This won't be the last meeting with the vice president and members of Memorial Sloan Kettering staff. They agreed to convene again soon to continue to discuss strategies to strengthen the fight against cancer.