Pay No Attention To Biden’s Biotech Bluster

Speaking in Boston earlier this month, President Biden insisted that the United States can “end cancer as we know it and even cure cancers once and for all.”

His “Cancer Moonshot” aims to do just that. Among its many lofty goals, it seeks to halve cancer deaths in the next 25 years.

But if the president wants to cure cancer, he and his Democratic allies have an odd way of showing it. In the last few weeks alone, progressives have advanced several policies that directly undermine the development of new cures and treatments for cancer and countless other deadly diseases.

Look no further than the president’s recent executive order on biotechnology, which he was in Boston to trumpet. The policy seeks to bolster America’s biotech industry in part by shielding it from international competition. And according to the president, such protectionism is part and parcel of his Cancer Moonshot initiative.

“[I]t’s not enough to invent technologies that save lives,” Biden said. “We need to manufacture advanced biotechnologies here in the United States.”

But these two goals have nothing to do with each other. And they might even work at cross purposes. Why should it matter where a cancer breakthrough happens, or in what country a new cancer therapy is manufactured? Biden’s top priority ought to be removing barriers to medical innovation—not imposing arbitrary geographical requirements on it.

As he himself said in the same speech, “Cancer does not discriminate red and blue; it doesn’t care if you’re a Republican or a Democrat.” Yet somehow it cares whether cancer therapies are American-made?

Protectionism and industrial policy will yield a less efficient research and development process. The Democrats’ recently passed Inflation Reduction Act will actively impede the drive for new treatments and cures.

The law empowers the federal government to impose prescription drug price controls through Medicare. Yet by systematically underpaying for innovative drugs—possibly including treatments for cancer—the policy sends a signal to the drug industry that its breakthroughs aren’t valued.

At the same time, these price controls add immense uncertainty to the economics of drug development. Why fund a multibillion-dollar research project with a high chance of failure if the fruits of that research will be subject to price controls? The math just won’t work for investors, who will deploy their capital elsewhere.

Patients will ultimately pay the price for the slowdown in investment in drugs—in the form of fewer effective treatments and cures.

Democrats’ recent attacks on the Food and Drug Administration’s accelerated approval process are yet another way in which they’re obstructing medical discovery. In particular, a bill introduced in May by Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey would add a host of new restrictions on medicines granted accelerated approval.

Drugs approved via this pathway usually address a health problem for which there are few or no other options. By adding new layers of bureaucracy to the process of fast-tracking these life-saving medicines, Rep. Pallone’s bill would actually make it harder for the latest medical breakthroughs to reach the patients who need them most.

Then there’s the recent effort by Senate Democrats to allow Americans to import lower-cost prescription drugs from Canada. This policy, a version of which passed the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in June, is often touted as a way to give people access to cheaper drugs.

In reality, it simply imports Canada’s price controls on prescription drugs. If adopted widely, it would lead to the same economic distortions as the IRA—and thereby reduce investment in developing the kinds of cures the president’s moonshot is supposed to bring about.

America’s market-oriented system of drug development has made our nation the global leader in medical innovation for decades. Yet President Biden and his Democratic allies propose to scrap that system in favor of his government-driven “Moonshot.” The result will be fewer effective therapies and cures for the cancer patients the president claims to want to help.