Chemicals: Biden's 'End Cancer' Pledge Begs For Environmental Oversight [1]
"President Biden pledged last week to 'end cancer as we know it,' a bold promise focused on boosting funding to the National Institutes of Health for a special Advanced Research Projects Agency-Health.
ARPA-H would be similar to the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, acting as a technology incubator by funding high-potential, high-impact projects that are too early for private-sector investment, but with the 'singular purpose to develop breakthroughs to prevent, detect and treat' diseases.
'I can think of no more worthy investment. I know of nothing that is more bipartisan,' Biden told Congress last week. 'So let's end cancer as we know it. It's within our power. It's within our power to do it.'
But public health experts who have spent their careers examining environmental causes of cancer say it may not be possible to truly stop cancer without EPA stepping in.
The agency has been infamously slow to stop the use of known carcinogens for decades. Those include benzene, arsenic and asbestos, which is responsible for 40,000 deaths per year alone."