United States: Joe Biden dreams of “curing cancer once and for all.”

Joe Biden, who has a painfully personal dimension to the matter, told Monday of his dream to “cure cancer once and for all,” a historic speech by John Fitzgerald Kennedy, exactly sixty years after he landed on the moon.

“In America, we believe that anything is possible,” he said in a speech at a bookstore dedicated to the assassinated president in Boston (Northeast), after an introduction by the latter’s daughter, Caroline Kennedy.

Inspired by a “JFK” speech sixty years ago, promising to send a man to the moon, Joe Biden said he wanted to “organize and measure our power and ability to end cancer. We even know we can cure cancer once and for all.”

“Cancer (…) doesn’t care if you’re a Republican or a Democrat. Beating cancer is something we can do together,” he said. By promising to conquer the moon, John Fitzgerald Kennedy “created a national purpose and a common cause capable of uniting the American people. He succeeded,” recalled the US president, who wants to reduce cancer-related deaths by 50% in 25 years.

About this he said, “Increasingly, cancer is not a death sentence, but a chronic disease with which people can live.” This attack by the US executive is multifaceted. For example, the focus is on the sometimes exorbitant cost of treatment, including diagnosing and treating cancers, blood tests, and new treatments.

“When they get a diagnosis, the first thing many people think about is, ‘How am I going to pay for care? Do I have to sell the house? Stop making monthly car payments? Can I pay for the kids’ education?'” the US president said.

The White House recalled that the American health insurance system, which is accessible to many American citizens, beneficiaries of the Medicare program, especially those over age 65, has an out-of-pocket payment of $2,000 per year. Still, he points out, some patients must pay thousands of dollars each year to treat prostate or breast cancer.

Another major goal of the US government is screening and the development of new treatments. The US has launched a large-scale trial – initially with 24,000 people, with the aim of expanding to 225,000 people – to identify tests that can detect only one or more cancers from a blood test.

Joe Biden also mentioned the possibility of developing vaccines and finding less burdensome treatments: “Imagine a pill bought at the local pharmacy and a long hospital stay rather than harsh chemotherapy, a simple blood test or invasive treatments.

On September 12, 1962, JFK announced: “We choose to go to the moon,” setting the goal that men would walk there by the end of the decade. This mission has been accomplished since Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 21, 1969. The fight against cancer is a political cause, but an intimate one for the US president, whose eldest son Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46.