What I Said to the Largest Convening of Cancer Researchers in the Country Yesterday: — Medium

" ... But like every family who faces, cancer — you tend to become — as my mother would say, a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing — you tend to become and try to learn as much as you can about the cancer your beloved family member is fighting. And that’s what we did when our Beau was diagnosed. We had access to the best doctors in the world. And the more we talked to them, the more we understood that we are on the cusp of a real inflection point in the fight against cancer. I thought I was relatively well-informed, but I really didn’t quite understand that immunology was sort of a discipline “out there” 10 years ago. I didn’t fully understand that only in the last four to five years has there been increased interdisciplinary cooperation. Only recently have various disciplines begun to work with one another. As recently as five years ago, oncologists weren’t working with immunologists, virologists, geneticists, chemical engineers, biological engineers. That’s all changed ... That’s why, when I announced my decision not to seek the nomination for President — and the President escorted me, came out with me in the Rose Garden when I made that announcement — it was almost a wistful thought of mine. It wasn’t a prepared initiative. I said, 'I believe we need a moonshot in this country to cure cancer.' You saw in the piece done before we came out. I said, it is personal ... "