Joe Biden threatens funding cut if cancer trials conceal results

WASHINGTON — Vice President Joe Biden threatened Wednesday to pull federal funding for cancer studies that fail to publicly disclose their results, putting pressure on researchers, clinicians and drug companies to speed up progress toward cancer cures.

For months, Biden has been imploring cancer researchers to share their data and trial results more freely, so that scientists can build on each other’s progress and more readily identify treatments that might work for individual patients.

There’s no mechanism in place to enforce the mandate that trials results be quickly posted to www.clinicaltrials.gov, where patients and their doctors can identify treatments that have been effective for other patients.

Cancer researchers and their institutions have pushed back on those critiques, arguing they already share reams of data and partner frequently with each other and the government.

Biden had hoped to dramatically boost government activity on cancer, but his campaign has run up against the same political and logistical obstacles that have challenged other White House priorities.