ANDRZEJ KRAUZELast year, Vice President Biden said that with a new moonshot, America can cure cancer . . . .Let’s make America the country that cures cancer once and for all.
—President Barak Obama, State of the Union address, January 2016
The time has come in America when the same kind of concentrated effort that split the atom and took man to the moon should be turned toward conquering this dread disease. Let us make a total national commitment to achieve this goal.
—President Richard Nixon, signing into law the National Cancer Act of 1971, December 1970
In the decades separating these statements, such exhortations and promises didn’t come only from politicians; many scientists have also claimed that eradicating cancer was within reach. Beginning in February 2003, Andrew von Eschenbach, who served as director of the National Cancer Institute from 2002 to 2006, repeatedly named 2015 as the year by which he believed the disease could ...
