Helping a Cancer Moonshot Succeed
September 7, 2022
On the upcoming sixtieth anniversary of President Kennedy’s famous “We choose to go to the moon” speech, President Biden intends to reignite plans for a “Cancer Moonshot” to cut deaths from the disease by half within 25 years. But as Walter Valdivia contends in Issues, so-called moonshot programs raise questions about “whether these large commitments of public resources have generated proportionally large societal benefits. Are we better off with them? Are they even necessary?” Still, the author writes, the limited knowledge available does suggest some modest rules of thumb that policymakers can follow to wring the most from big bets on targeted R&D projects.