(Washington, D.C., Wednesday, June 30, 2021) – Earlier this year, President Joe Biden announced a commitment “to end cancer as we know it.” Ending the scourge of cancer could be the Bidens’ lasting legacy if their cancer moonshot is successful. There are already several universally recognized paths for reducing cancer’s impact: smoking cessation, fighting obesity, and early detection. But advancements in cancer detecting technology provide the most hope to treating and preventing cancer.

One example of this technology is the Galleri test, which could help detect more than 50 types of cancer without the invasive procedures and expensive scans that are often only conducted after symptoms are present and the disease has progressed. With this technology, a simple blood test can tell doctors whether cancer is present in the patient and can also give doctors a good idea about where in the body the cancer is present. Early detection has the added benefit of reducing the cost of care as cancer is much easier to treat when discovered early. The company responsible for this testing is called GRAIL.

Recently, another company called Illumina announced it intended to acquire full ownership of GRAIL. Illumina believes it could get this test to doctors and patients years faster than GRAIL could on its own.

What would seem like a major step toward achieving Biden’s cancer moonshot is now being thwarted by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is holding up the acquisition for antitrust review.

Attorney and former presidential campaign advisor Michael Starr Hopkins discusses how technology is the key to cancer treatments, Grail’s Galleri test and why the FTC shouldn’t be holding up the merger between Grail and Illumina.

Michael Starr Hopkins Bio:

Michael Starr Hopkins is a communications professional, a campaign advisor, an attorney and former member of the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. As a candidate for the U.S. Senate in New Jersey he took a principled stance that nobody should ever be denied health care or “wonder if they will die of a curable disease because they can’t afford proper coverage.”