SXSW Conference | Vice President Joe Biden’s Cancer Initiative

The work of the Cancer Moonshot Task Force and the Biden Cancer Initiative is tasked with finding a cure to the disease,and referenced John F. Kennedy’s initiative to put a human being on the moon. “He talked about the effort to go to the moon as a commitment that the American people had made and were unwilling to postpone. That was his phrase.”

Biden asked the techies in the SXSW audience to devote as their time and resources to helping researchers gain access to data, technology and tools needed to beat cancer with as much tech as it requires to increase modern smartphone tasks.

“We can solve all these problems,” Biden said. “They’re technological problems, [not] a cancer problem. We need your help, we need your help.”

Biden lost his son Beau to brain cancer a year ago, said that he would have liked to have been president when the cure is finally found. When President Obama announced his Moonshot initiative, he immediately charged Biden to spearhead the initiative.

“When he gave me the sign, he gave me all of the authority of the president to go through with this,” Biden explained. “I could hire, fire, set priorities. I didn’t have to check.” As he delved into the project, he said, “I learned that we have to approach cancer at this moment with the urgency of now.”

After Donald Trump’s presidential election, Biden announced still remains vigilant to spend the rest of his life in the fight against cancer with theBiden Cancer Initiative in a privatized version of the Obama administration’s moonshot initiative, which includes the former director of the Obama administration’s Cancer Moonshot Task Force as well as other members of that team.