Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/627660
ByJoshLederman The Associated Press WASHINGTON Four weeks after announcing he wouldn't run for presi- dent, Joe Biden returned to the world-renowned cancer center in Texas where doc- tors had tried to save his son's life. Officially, the vice pres- ident was in Houston to speak about infrastructure spending and raise money for Democrats. Left off of his public schedule was a meeting with Dr. Ron- ald DePinho, president of MD Anderson Cancer Cen- ter, whose Moon Shots Pro- gram has set out to end the dreaded disease. Since declaring his own "moonshot" to cure cancer three months ago, Biden researched what's holding back a cure, searching for answers with all the metic- ulousness of a physician di- agnosing disease. His con- clusion: The hold-up, in large part, lies in the can- cer world itself. "My grandpop used to say, 'Joey, there's three kinds of politics' " — church politics, labor politics and regular politics, Biden re- called recently, before add- ing one of his own. "Well, there's four kinds. There's cancer politics." He deemed that particu- lar brand even more vexing than the rest. As one of his final acts in office, Biden has re- solved to "break down si- los" he says are pervasive throughout the sprawling and fragmented world of oncologists, scientists and benefactors. Meetings with nearly 200 of them revealed a community rife with com- petition, territorialism and resistance to information- sharing that's left research- ers and their discoveries cloistered in their own cor- ners, aides and others who met with Biden said. Asked how Americans could help, Biden minced no words: "Demand collab- oration from the scientific community," he wrote on Twitter. Biden, who will kick off his initiative Friday with a tour and discussion at Phil- adelphia's Abramson Cancer Center, has yet to lay out ex- actly what he'll do over the next 12 months that hasn't been done in the half cen- tury since Richard Nixon declared war on cancer. But advisers said in ad- dition to pushing for more funding, Biden would use his influence to encourage data-sharing about patients and treatment outcomes, so researchers from vari- ous institutions can bet- ter build on each other's work. A key focus will be promising advances in im- munotherapy, which uses the immune system to at- tack tumors, and "preci- sion medicine," which per- sonalizes treatments based on the genetic makeup of a patient's tumors. For Biden, the emotional undertones of his mission are difficult to avoid. After his 46-year-old son, Beau Biden, died from brain can- cer in May, Biden entered a period of painfully public mourning, followed eventu- ally by his decision against getting into the presiden- tial race. "This is still a blow that he's still recovering from," said former Sen. Ted Kaufman, a Biden confi- dante for many decades. "He's in his problem-solv- ing mode. He's more com- fortable in this area because of his desire to eliminate this thing that caused him so much damage." Biden is not a doctor, nor a medical researcher. So when he announced a bid "to cure cancer," more than a few eyebrows were raised. Some wondered whether Biden was raising expecta- tions in a way he could later regret. "I'm an eternal optimist, but I'm not going to go around saying we're going to cure cancer in five years. That's just not realistic," said Dr. George Demetri, a Harvard Medical School professor and researcher at the Dana-Farber Can- cer Institute who met with Biden's staff. "There's a fine line between having big, hairy, audacious goals and realistic goals, so the pub- lic doesn't come back and say in five years, 'Hey, you didn't deliver on that, pal.' " Even President Barack Obama, quizzed by a fourth-grader, said Thurs- day that cancer "probably won't be cured in my life- time, but I think it'll be cured in yours." Immense progress has been made in recent years. Survival rates for most cancers are increasing, al- though the American Can- cer Society still predicts nearly 1.7 million new can- cer cases this year and nearly 600,000 deaths. Because cancer takes hundreds of forms, it can't be eradicated by any single advance. Cancer research- ers who met with Biden re- cently said he was intrigued by the possibilities for im- proving prevention and early detection. Skewing typical parti- san divides, the issue also offers rare prospects for Democrats and Republicans to make common cause in Obama and Biden's last year. Sen. Roy Blunt, a Mis- souri Republican, worked directly with Biden last month to secure a long- awaited funding boost for the National Institutes of Health, including $260 mil- lion for cancer. HEALTH Biden sees politics of cancer world as obstacle to cure JOSEPHKACZMAREK—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS Vice President Joe Biden gestures while speaking on Friday as Dr. Francis Collins, right, listens during a roundtable discussion in the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. By Stan Choe The Associated Press NEW YORK Yes, this is scary. Stockpricesplungedagain Friday and are down more than 8 percent in just two weeks, an unprecedented slide for a start of a year. The vicious drops feel even more unsettling be- cause they're such a depar- ture from the placid and strong returns that inves- tors had been enjoying for years. Like vacationers re- turning from a warm beach to a slushy commute to work, the shock of change is making something already painful even more so. Now investors just need to get used to it, analysts say. "It was easy for many years," says Bill Barker, portfolio manager at Mot- ley Fool Asset Management, whose three mutual funds control about $600 million. "That was not an accurate display of what happens in the market all the time." The painful return of big price swings serves as a reminder that investing in stocks can be harrowing, especially if investors focus on the day-to-day moves. That's not to say inves- tors can't still win over the long term. Over the past 12 months, an investor in an S&P 500 index fund has lost nearly 5 percent, includ- ing dividends. But over five years, they are up a total of 60 percent, and over 10 years,theyareup79percent. It's just that analysts ex- pect the volatility to con- tinue. The remarkably calm stretch from late 2011 through last summer was an anomaly. From 2012 until last sum- mer, investors basked in a market where the Standard & Poor's 500 rarely had a badday.Thewidelyfollowed index fell more than 1 per- cent less often than Los An- geles has rainy days, about 8 percent of the time. During that span, the S&P 500 also completely avoided a "cor- rection," which is what trad- ers call a sustained drop of 10 percent. It wasn't until this past August when the S&P 500 snapped into its first cor- rection in nearly four years, felled by concerns about China's slowdown and the fragility of the global econ- omy. The worries have re- sumed this year. The S&P 500 fell back into a correc- tion, and it has already had six days where it's lost more than 1 percent. That means the S&P 500 has had that big a drop in 22 percent of the trading days since Aug. 20, more than the historical average. But when looking at the last five years as a whole, the recent spurt of volatility has merely pulled the mar- ket back to "normal." The S&P 500 has had a 1 per- cent drop in 11 percent of trading days in the last five years, the same as its aver- age over the last 50 years. The latest big drop came Friday, when the S&P 500 fell as much as 3.5 percent and at one point erased 15 months of gains. Besides China's sharp economic slowdown, ana- lysts see other reasons for volatility to continue. Ten- sions in the Middle East are high, and the plunge in prices of oil and other com- modities are raising con- cerns about global economic growth and decimating the profits — and share prices — of materials producers. What makes the volatil- ity even more painful to endure is that many ana- lysts are forecasting stock returns to be lower this year and in the coming years than in the recent past. So investors are fac- ing the prospect of higher risk without much higher reward. 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