Joe Biden said on Monday that ending cancer “as we know it” was one of the reasons he ran for president as he pursues his goal of halving cancer deaths over the next 25 years.
The president launched his cancer Moonshot targets at the John F. Kennedy Library, on the 60th anniversary of Kennedy’s famous “Moonshot” speech, where JFK called on America to defeat Russia to the moon.
“On the 60th anniversary of his clarion call, we face a new inflection point and together we can choose to move forward with unity, hope and optimism,” Biden said.
He called on Americans to muster the “energies and skills” to “end cancer as we know it. And even cure cancer once and for all.’
“This cancer moonshot is one of the reasons I ran for president,” he said.
Biden noted that cancer does not discriminate. “It doesn’t matter if you’re Republican or Democrat.”
Biden was in Boston to purposely repeat John F. Kennedy’s famous 1962 “Moonshot speech” calling for an American to land on the lunar surface—something accomplished in 1969.
He had Kennedy’s daughter, who serves as his ambassador to Australia, by his side.
Caroline Kennedy repeatedly praised Biden in her opening address.
“He lives up to President Kennedy’s call to service throughout his life and career. As president, he has restored the soul of America, freedom and democracy around the world. For more than 50 years, President Biden has fought for working families, affordable health care, access to quality education and always to honor our men and women in uniform,” she said.
The president also issued an executive order to boost the US biotech sector as part of the initiative, which calls on the national effort to land a man on the moon.
This time, Biden is pushing for government-backed efforts to coordinate and fund a multi-layered fight against cancer, with the goal of halving the cancer death rate in the next 25 years.
President Joe Biden heads to Boston to achieve his goal of halving cancer deaths in the next 25 years with his ‘Cancer Moonshot’
When he left Washington, Biden issued an order intended to bolster the U.S. biotech sector’s pioneering efforts to tackle growing commercial rivals in China.
The order brings federal support to “areas that will define U.S. biotech leadership and our economic competitiveness in the decades to come,” a senior Biden administration official told reporters.
The official said that while US biotech research leads the world, its industrial applications are increasingly in the hands of other countries.
“Unless we translate biotech innovation into economic and societal benefits for all Americans, other countries, including and especially China, are investing aggressively in this sector,” posing a “risk,” the official said.
The White House says the U.S. biotech industry is on the cutting edge of medical advances — most recently seen in the rapid development of vaccines, tests and therapies to help contain the Covid-19 pandemic — but its potential scope goes much further.
President Biden will speak at the Kennedy Library on the 60th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s famous speech on space travel
The official speaking to reporters cited studies suggesting that “engineering biology has the potential to be used in manufacturing industries that account for more than a third of global production before the end of the decade.” That equates to nearly $30 trillion in value terms.”
Growth areas for the biotech industry include new plastics and rubbers, jet fuel and environmentally friendly fertilizers.
The fight against cancer is personal to Biden: His son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015 when Biden was vice president to Barack Obama.
In his speech at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston, Biden will outline how his administration is trying to lower cancer rates through a systematic renewal of government funding and support for everything from medical research to improving access to health care. and a better environment. condition.
Linking to the Moon program will seek to raise public awareness and support in the run-up to the congressional midterm elections, where Democrats face the possibility of a Republican victory in Congress, something the next two years of Biden’s first term of office seriously.
Caroline Kennedy, the US ambassador to Australia and daughter of the assassinated JFK, told CNN she endorsed the parallels drawn by Biden in the fight to overcome the deadly disease.
“Sixty years after my father challenged Americans to land on the moon, President Biden welcomes great challenges as new opportunities by setting us on a bold course to end cancer as we know it,” she said.
Biden’s focus on the fight against cancer comes as NASA is once again looking to return to the moon.
Biden appoints Dr. Renee Wegrzyn to First Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health
Biden will also be Dr. Renee Wegrzyn, a longtime science consultant and most recently employed by the biotech company Ginkgo Bioworks Holdings Inc, as the first director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, a US government-run biomedical research group.
At Ginkgo, Wegrzyn worked on applying synthetic biology to transcend infectious diseases – including COVID-19 – through large-scale biomanufacturing, vaccine innovation and biosurveillance of pathogens.
She also worked with the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity.
Biden’s speech will be on the 60th anniversary of President Kennedy’s Moonshot address at Rice University.
In that now famous speech, Kennedy said, “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are difficult, because that purpose will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one we’re willing to accept, one we don’t want to put off, and one we intend to win, and the others too.”