The "idea primary" among presidential candidates has a formidable new entry, unveiled yesterday by Sen. Joe Lieberman in a speech at George Washington University. Lieberman opened his remarks by saying he wanted to "talk about something so big, so special, so real, and so challenging it's become my passion," and then laid out a proposal for a major public-private push to find cures for major chronic diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, arthritis, diabetes, sickle cell anemia, AIDS, and cystic fibrosis.

"Chronic diseases," said Lieberman, "afflict 100 million Americans, and are responsible for three out of four deaths in America every year." Treatment of chronic diseases, he also noted, cost $750 billion a year."

"It is time to say: treatment is not enough. We need cures," said Lieberman. "That's why, as president, one of my highest priorities will be to build an American Center for Cures -- a new institute dedicated to finding the next generation of treatments, medicines, and vaccines, that will enable this generation of Americans to live healthier, stronger and longer lives."

As part of a national drive for research on cures for chronic disease, Lieberman rapped President Bush for his attempts to ban stem cell research, which offers some of the most promising avenues for cures. "On the first day I am privileged to enter the Oval Office, I will rescind the ban on stem cell research," said Lieberman.

He also argued that current public and private sector efforts to find cures for chronic diseases don't go far enough. "We are blessed to have the National Institutes of Health.... It is the greatest center of basic health research in the world. And at least five other federal research agencies also conduct medically related research. But none of these agencies was designed to quickly move breakthroughs from the laboratory to your medicine shelf."

In fact, Lieberman suggested, the Center for Cures will be different from, but will compliment the work of the NIH. It will create a "Manhattan Project" atmosphere focusing a broad range of scientists' energies on specific diseases.

"Some say," he continued, "we can depend on pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to deliver the life-saving cures we need. But we can't. These companies often invest most heavily in the next big-ticket blockbuster drug. They don't always have the incentives to target the diseases that take the lives of so many Americans."

Lieberman's proposed American Center for Cures would have three components: (1) a "National Cures Laboratory" modeled after other national labs, like Los Alamos, which would "pull together breakthroughs in disciplines from chemistry and biology to computer science, engineering and nanotechnology;" (2) a "Health Advanced Research Projects Agency" (a HARPA to parallel DARPA, the most important defense research agency) to commission "rapid and revolutionary drug development from leading scientists at universities, hospitals and companies throughout America," and (3) a "Knowledge Bank" to help "coordinate clinical trials of new treatments and provide resources to scientists."

The budget for the American Center for Cures, said Lieberman, would be $150 billion over 10 years, but "much of that will come from cooperative agreements and from sharing of royalties from new drugs -- not from taxpayers."

For some time now, the DLC has been working to develop the idea of a cure center, which is the brainchild of Chicago New Democrat Lou Weisbach and Dr. Rick Boxer.

The idea is also very congruent with the broader argument the Progressive Policy Institute has been making about the need to shift our health care system from occasionally treating chronic diseases when they become acute, to preventing, managing, and ultimately curing these diseases.

Lieberman closed his speech by invoking one of America's most famous sufferers from a chronic disease of his time: Franklin Roosevelt. "Roosevelt had courage. But he didn't have a cure. Tomorrow, if we all have courage, we can and we will find the cures."