President Joe Biden speaks at a cancer awareness campaign at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston on September 12.
Evan Vucci/AP
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Evan Vucci/AP
President Joe Biden speaks at a cancer awareness campaign at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston on September 12.
Evan Vucci/AP
It has been 60 years since President Kennedy delivered his landmark speech, marking America’s goal of putting a man into space step on the moon and return it to the earth.
On Monday, President Biden delivered a speech at the Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, describing progress on his own description: ending cancer.
“This cancer picture is one of the reasons why I ran for president,” Biden said. “Cancer doesn’t know between red and blue. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Republican or a Democrat. Beating cancer is something we can do together.”
Biden said cancer is often diagnosed too late and said “there are too few ways to prevent it in the first place.” He also added that there are serious inequities in cancer diagnosis and treatment based on race, disability, zip code, sexual orientation and gender identity.
“We know too little about why a treatment works for some patients but doesn’t work for another patient with the same disease. We still lack strategies in developing treatments for certain types of cancer,” he said, adding that “we have not done enough to help patients and families navigate the oncology care system.”
While Biden announced many of his own Cancer Moonshot goals in Februaryhe provided some updates in his speech on Monday.
Ahead of the speech, the White House announced that Dr. Rene Weggin would be named head of the new agency, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), the first person in the role. The agency was created by Biden in February to improve the US government’s ability to manage medical and biomedical research.
“ARPA-H will have the singular goal of making breakthroughs in the prevention, detection and treatment of diseases, including cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and other diseases, and enabling us to live healthier lives,” Biden said.
Biden also announced that he is signing a new executive order launching the National Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Initiative to ensure that technologies to help end cancer are made in America.
He said that creating new technologies to treat cancer and other things would create jobs and strengthen supply chains — and added that then the U.S. would not have to rely on anything else in the world for that progress.
In February, Biden first announced his goal to halve cancer deaths over the next 25 years and improve the experience of those living with and surviving cancer. At the time, he also announced the creation of a cancer cabinet that brought together different corners of the government to achieve his goal.
The fight against cancer is an issue Biden has dealt with since his time as vice president, and it’s an issue that affects his own family as well as Vice President Kamala Harris. Biden’s son, Beau Biden, died of brain cancer in 2015. And Harris’ mother Shyamala Gopalan Harris, who was a breast cancer researcher, died of colon cancer in 2009.
