As the world currently commemorates the World Cancer Awareness month, the fight against the disease has just got even more serious than before. All around the world, a significant number of experts have clearly noted that in their quest to battle out cancer, a number of treatments for the disease has been created but few has been highlighting its prevention. A year ago, just as former US President Obama has given his final State of the Union address, he clearly announced that the so-called "moonshot" initiative is all that patients will be needing since it has the ability to cure cancer once and for all.
'Moonshot' Initiative To Cure Cancer
According to reports revealed by Vox, although the moonshot initiative will be one of Obama's few health programs to continue under President Donald Trump since its $1.8 billion budget has already been secured, as of the press, time, in line with the commemoration of the World Cancer Day, experts say that it remains more difficult than ever to imagine a real cure. Furthermore, as experts have described it, one problem with the moonshot initiative is that it focuses on magic bullets, at the expense of the majority of current and future cancer patients. However, in order to successfully to eliminate the global burden of cancer, patients and doctors need an equal focus on prevention as on cure, or it could be that we need to redefine the word "cure" altogether.
Health Practitioners' Take On Moonshot Initiative
In one of her statements reported by The Star, Dr. Michele Potter-Williams, a nurse practitioner with the University of Maryland Shore Regional Cancer Center in Easton, who has represented the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) at the Moonshot briefing, said that her passion for patient advocacy prompted the Oncology Nursing Society to nominate her to attend the Cancer Moonshot to explore the challenges in community oncology and to advocate for the needs of oncology patients from the Eastern Shore.
Moreover, it was found that one of the purposes of the moonlight initiative for cancer is to allegedly accelerate cancer research (and) to make more therapies available to more patients, while also improving our ability to prevent cancer and detect it at an early stage. In addition, it is said that the National Cancer Institute is reportedly the sponsor of the said project.
