EDITORIAL
A Brighter Future for Medical Research
November 3, 2006
You could immediately tell he had spent
most of his life in a laboratory as opposed to an office building. His salt
and pepper hair lay messily on his head and an old briefcase worn with years
of use sat at his side. He looked as if he would be more comfortable in his
lab coat than the neatly pressed blazer he wore. I suspected that visiting a
Congressman’s office was quite far out of his daily routine.
“How long did you work on the project?” I asked.
“Seventeen years, everyday.” he responded, carefully annunciating each word.
“Did you feel like you had failed?” I asked.
The lines on his face relaxed as his lips curled into a smile. “No,” he said
confidently peering through the thick glasses that rested on his nose. “It
was worth every minute and every penny.”
I tried to imagine the last seventeen years of my life. I’d watched my
children enter and graduate from high school and college, find jobs, and
begin their adult lives. I had been an attorney working with numerous small
businesses, served in the General Assembly, and come to Washington to serve
in the House of Representatives. So much had happened during these years.
And there were so many tangible accomplishments that I could point to.
But also during that time, I remembered vividly the last months and days of
Dad’s life as he struggled through the final stages of Parkinson’s disease.
And I remembered the three years that my good friend Margaret came to work
in our office everyday battling the breast cancer that destroyed her body
before it eventually took her life.
Sitting in front of me was a man who had spent the last seventeen years
working as medical researcher. For seventeen years he had worked on one drug
to treat one disease. And after seventeen years he had perfected the drug
until it worked. But while it cured the disease, its side-effects ravaged
the body in other areas. Ultimately, the drug would never make it to the
prescription counter.
Since coming to Washington, I’ve met with and talked to many medical
researchers with similar stories. And I’ve met with countless other
organizations, groups, families, and individuals who have depended so
completely on the ability of medical researchers to continue working for
cures. Each one has told me how critical it is for the federal government to
continue investing in medical research to further the cause for better
treatments, new vaccines and improved medications.
In Congress we have made two significant steps towards this goal. Recently,
the House of Representatives passed the National Institutes of Health Reform
Act of 2006 (H.R. 6164). This bill authorizes a five-percent increase in
NIH’s budget each year from 2007-2009. The funding increase allows for
continued and new biomedical research projects, research project grants, and
biodefense research. Health organizations including the American Heart
Association, Association of American Medical Colleges, and the National MS
Society have advocated for this increase.
Additionally, this week brought the first announcement in a series of grants
resulting from the Stem Cell Therapeutic and Research Act of 2005 (PL
109-129) which authorized the creation of a national bank of umbilical cord
blood rich in adult stem cells. The legislation passed by overwhelming
margins in Congress and was signed into law last December by President Bush.
Unlike research requiring the destruction of human embryos, these cord blood
stem cells are successfully treating human patients today. These grants will
truly allow medical waste to be turned into medical miracles. The Stem Cell
Therapeutic and Research Act of 2005 authorized the creation of a national
program to collect 150,000 units of cord blood, focused on genetic
diversity. It also creates a registry to link public cord blood banks
nationwide so that physicians can search the whole bank for a blood or bone
marrow match.
Adult stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood are non-controversial and
are already providing treatments for a host of diseases including leukemia,
sickle cell anemia, cerebral palsy, and Hodgkin’s disease. In fact, just
this week, scientists in Britain announced that they used cord blood to grow
the world’s first artificial liver. While these artificial livers are not
yet ready for transplant into humans, the development once again shows that
stem cells derived from ethical sources are showing greater promise in
delivering real treatments for actual patients.
These advancements, coupled with the increases in funding at the National
Institutes of Health, are laying the foundation for even better prospects
for medical research and greater hope for the many people across the United
States suffering from disease and illness. And with these investments, I am
sure we will look back, as the medical researcher did, and say, “It was
worth every minute and every penny.”
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