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Former Vice President Joe Biden made an appearance at South by Southwest festival in Austin, TX on Sunday to urge young people and leaders in the tech industry to join the fight against cancer. The issue is one that lies close to heart for Biden, whose son Beau died of brain cancer at the age of 46 in 2015.

After an intro by his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, the former VP stepped on stage. He received a bigger crowd than he expected ("Obviously Pharrell's not playing at the same time," he joked at the start of his speech), but he was touched by the turnout.

"We had lost our son on Memorial Day, and I had been putting off the decision as to whether or not to seek the Democratic nomination for president," Biden explained, at times getting emotional. "And what I realized that summer, and into the fall, that neither Jill nor I nor our beloved son Hunter and my daughter Ashley—really speaking for myself—had the stomach to do it. No one should ever run for the president of the United States unless they are prepared to give every, every ounce of their energy to that undertaking."

After making that decision he recalled offhandedly telling President Obama his one regret of not running: "I would have loved to be the president who presided over the end of cancer as we know it." Three months later, Obama surprised him at the State of the Union speech with the Cancer Moonshot Initiative, which aims to accelerate cancer research, and put Biden in charge.

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Now, two months after ending his two terms as VP, Biden is at the helm of another cancer-fighting organization, the Biden Foundation, which he and Jill Biden launched on February 1 to support public service initiatives like ending violence against women and protecting children, in addition to finding a cure to the deadly illness.

"Your generation can be the first generation on Earth that goes through life with a completely different understanding of cancer: as a preventable or controllable disease, rather than a death sentence," he said in his concluding remarks.

Aside from addressing the crowd, the Bidens also caught a moment with a few members of Game of Thrones: costars Maisie Williams (Arya Stark) and Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark) and showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.

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Watch the Bidens' full session below.

[youtube ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IykG7_zHXoo&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

From: Harper's BAZAAR US