Opinion: Scientific, moral imperatives underlie the ARPA-H mandate to include rare disorders
The response to Covid-19 by the biomedical research community in the U.S. and around the globe has been spectacular in both speed and impact. It is time to respond with the same sense of urgency to every disease. Toward that end, President Biden has proposed creating a new agency, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), modeled on the defense-focused DARPA. He cited cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and diabetes as motivating challenges.
DARPA’s track record in transformative innovation is unparalleled. It brought us the internet, GPS, Siri, stealth fighters, and more. In fact, in responding to the threat of pandemics as a national security matter, DARPA invested years ago in the mRNA technology so essential to devising the vaccines that, we hope, will bring Covid-19 under control.
