President Biden delivers 'Cancer Moonshot' speech at JFK Library in Boston
BOSTON - President Joe Biden delivered a speech Monday in Boston highlighting his mission to cut cancer deaths in half over the next 25 years.
The timing of the address, and its location at the JFK Library, was to purposefully draw parallels between John F. Kennedy's goal of landing a man on the moon and Biden's own vision for another "American moonshot."
Biden highlighted a new federally backed study that is being called a potential game changer in diagnostic cancer testing. It uses a single blood test to screen for multiple cancers in healthy people.
Experts agree it's too early to know if it will have any success reducing cancer deaths. Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the country.
The issue is personal to the president. His son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015.
"The goal is to cut cancer death rates by at least 50% in the next 25 years. To turn more cancers from death sentences into chronic diseases people could live with. To create a more supportive experience for patients and families," said Biden. "It's a disease we often diagnose too late and have too few ways to prevent it in the first place."
President Biden discussed some of the progress that his administration has made in the fight against cancer and expanding access to treatment.
"Not just a shot a movement, to create a cancer research and care system that most people think we already have but they don't realize until they find they have cancer that we don't, but one that we deserve," Biden said.
He also appointed Dr. Renee Wegrzyn as the Director of Advanced Research Projects Agency for Heath.
Local cancer survivor Kate Weissman is part of the American Cancer Society Action Network that has been meeting with members of Congress to make sure cancer is their priority moving forward. She told WBZ-TV it meant the world to her to have the president here, speaking about the issue.
"I am here today because they caught it early so I had access to screening and I had access to treatment. That's really why I'm here. If I didn't have any of those things, which so many people do not, my outcome would have been completely different," she said.
Before the president headed to JFK Library, he stopped at Logan Airport to speak about the recently passed bipartisan infrastructure law.
"It's the most significant investment since President Eisenhower's interstate highway system," Biden said at Logan. "Through the infrastructure law, we're investing $62 million here at Logan, it's the largest grant for airport terminals in the country thus far, and one of the largest federal investments in airports ever. This project is going to create 5,900 jobs, union jobs where people make a decent salary."
The investment will add more gates and increase accessibility in Terminal E.
Massachusetts State Police warned drivers to expect detours and delays during Biden's visit.