Amid cancer breakthroughs, hospitals aim for top talent, clinical trials

Last month, in a wide-ranging speech announcing he wouldn't run for the office, Vice President Joe Biden said if he could have been any kind of president, he'd want to be the one who ended cancer. "The things that are just about to happen — we can make them real with an absolute national commitment to end cancer as we know it today," said Biden. His son had died of brain cancer months earlier. Since the war on cancer began during Richard Nixon's presidency nearly 45 years ago, it has often seemed as if things were about to happen.