Biden tells SXSW he wanted to be the president to end cancer

Former Vice President Joe Biden made a push for his continued effort to cure cancer and urged President Trump’s administration to take on the fight during an address at the South by Southwest Festival in Texas on Sunday.

“Your generation could be the first generation on Earth that goes through life with a completely different understanding of cancer as preventable … instead of a death sentence,” Biden said during his speech, according to reports.

Biden also told the crowd that he would have wanted to be the president who ended cancer.

{mosads}He said that before he announced in 2015 his decision not to run for president, he told then-President Obama that he “would have loved to have been the president who presided over the end of cancer as we know it.”

Biden, whose son Beau died from brain cancer in 2015, detailed in his emotional, hourlong speech the work still needed to be accomplished through the White House Cancer Moonshot Task Force, which was established under Obama last January.

He reportedly did not mention Trump by name but made references to his administration in his remarks. 

“It is my hope that this new administration, once it gets organized — and I’m not being facetious — will be able to focus on and be as committed and as enthusiastic as we were in the goal of ending cancer as we know it,” he said.

“I will do everything in my power to work with the new administration,” Biden added.

He added that the federal government was crucial in getting the needed funding for cancer research, urging attendees to keep the pressure on elected officials.

“Your government, that many of you don’t like, is the vehicle for how much of this gets funded, by and large.”