The most striking element of Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address as President of the United States was the declaration to take the fight against the world’s most skilled and elusive killer to unprecedented levels.

Some proclaimed that Tuesday’s was the best of Obama’s seven addresses, while others surmised that the finest orator of the world’s leaders remains simply that, but is out of touch and out of ideas.

It is very likely that Obama’s legacy may not be determined until after the next election, with a Democratic victory essential to him being viewed in a favourable light.

What the political pundits could agree on, though, was that it is right to dream that the scourge of cancer can be defeated — and soon.

Cancer has accounted for more lives lost than all world wars, civil wars and terrorist atrocities combined.

We feel it acutely here in Bermuda. Almost every family and every workplace is living with cancer and its effects.

And it comes in more than 100 forms, with lung cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, thyroid cancer and brain cancer being among the more common. At present incurable.

Imagine the devastation were there more than 100 terrorist organisations, all active, with no way of eradicating them. Imagine the world if the likes of Isis were to realise their ambition of creating a caliphate.

It does not bear imagining, but the world has been agonising over a cure for cancer since Hippocrates, the “father of medicine”, discovered its existence more than 2,000 years ago.

The United States has spent more than $200 billion on cancer research since Richard Nixon signed into law the National Cancer Act of 1971.

However, there was only a 5 per cent drop in the cancer death rate in the 55 years to 2005. But now Obama, lampooned as a dreamer by the worst of his critics, thinks mankind is in a position to crack an age-old problem, equating the quest to America’s commitment to putting a man on the Moon despite being beaten into space by the Soviets.

The Apollo programme cost an estimated $206 billion in today’s money, and Obama is advocating that a similar seismic shift in spending can put an end to cancer.

His right-hand man, Joe Biden, is entrusted with the challenge of seeing this through, the Vice-President having added motivation after the death of his eldest son, Beau, from brain cancer last year.

“For the loved ones we’ve all lost, for the families we can still save, let’s make America the country that cures cancer once and for all,” Obama said before taking a glance back towards an approving Biden and adding, “What do you say, Joe? Let’s make it happen.”

“Curing cancer” is not even a single task; there are many kinds of cancer and many different ways that a cell can go wrong before metastasising. Remember, this is the human body; not man-made but created by a being we have yet fully to comprehend or appreciate.

It was very reasonable for John F. Kennedy to proclaim that if the US were willing to spend enough money on the project, it could get to the Moon in relatively short order.

A cure for cancer may not be possible, but Obama’s policy change, on the back of the National Institutes of Health being given a shot in the arm by Congress, will lead to bucketloads’ more money being thrown at scientists to determine so once and for all.

Does it matter who gets there first? It didn’t when the Soviet Union launched the unmanned Sputnik 1 in 1957 and then sent Yuri Gagarin as the first man in space four years later.

And it didn’t when the Americans, at the peak of the “Space Race”, put Buzz Aldrin on the Moon.

In the end, it benefited all of the world, as would that much sought-after cure for cancer.