The president of the United States, Joe Biden, expressed this Monday his dream of “curing cancer once and for all”, declarations that come 60 years after John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s historic speech on the conquest of the Moon.
“In America we believe that everything is possible,” stressed the US head of state in a speech at the bookstore dedicated to the assassinated president, in Boston, in the northeastern United States.
Taking inspiration from the speech “JFK” gave 60 years ago, the day he promised to send a man to the moon, Joe Biden explained that he intends to “organize and measure the best of energy and talent to end cancer as it exists today today in society and even cure cancer once and for all.
“Cancer (…) does not care if we are Republicans or Democrats. Beating cancer is something we can do together,” he stressed.
By promising to conquer the Moon, John Fitzgerald Kennedy had “created a national goal, capable of uniting the American people and a common cause. % for the next 25 years.”
“Increasingly, cancer is not a death sentence, but a chronic disease that people can live with,” he said.
Joe Biden thus signed an executive order on Monday to encourage the biotechnology necessary to end cancer “as it is currently known” to be developed and manufactured in the United States.
The initiative, as detailed by the White House, will save lives, create jobs at home, strengthen supply chains and reduce the external dependence of the United States in this area.
The fight against cancer is a political goal, but also an intimate fight for the American president, whose eldest son, Beau Biden, died of brain cancer in 2015, at the age of 46.
The US executive’s ambition is multifaceted, focusing on the sometimes exorbitant cost of treatments, screening and treatment, and exploring blood tests and new therapies.
The White House recalled having limited to 2,000 dollars a year the amount that many US citizens, beneficiaries of the Medicare program, the US health insurance system to which those over 65 have access in particular, must pay out of pocket.
However, underlines the US presidency, it currently happens that some patients have to pay thousands of dollars each year to treat prostate or breast cancer.
Another great ambition of the Biden administration concerns the detection and development of new treatments.
The United States has launched a large-scale test – initially with 24,000 people, with the goal of expanding to 225,000 people – to identify tests that would be able to detect one or more cancers from a blood test alone.
Joe Biden also mentioned the possibility of developing vaccines and finding less painful treatments: “Imagine, instead of exhausting chemotherapy, a simple blood test or a pill bought at the local pharmacy, instead of invasive treatments and long hospital stays.
JFK proclaimed on September 12, 1962, “We have chosen to go to the Moon,” setting the goal of having men walk on Earth’s natural satellite by the end of the decade.
The objective was fulfilled, because on July 21, 1969 Neil Armstrong stepped on the Moon.
The United States is also carrying out a program to return to the moon, Artemis.
NASA intends to test the new giant rocket without a crew and has tried twice to get it off the ground, but has been delayed for technical reasons.
The mega rocket is under repair and the next attempt could take place on September 23 or 27.
Source: TSF
