Throughout this month, cancer survivors and other ACS CAN advocates delivered hundreds of signed petitions to Senators Reed and Whitehouse and to Representatives Langevin and Cicilline from local residents, call on Congress to boost the nation's investment in lifesaving cancer research. Similar activites are taking place across the country as survivors and their families deliver thousands of petitions gathered by ACS CAN volunteers.
Federal funding for medical research has declined nearly 18 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars since 2003, forcing cancer centers to face the prospect of halting promising clinical trials and drying up the grant pool relied upon by researchers. For decades, research supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Cancer Institute (NCI) has played a key role in virutally every major cancer prevention, detection and treatment discovery. We can do more to turn this around. The petitions volunteers delivered represent constituents in Rhode Island who are calling upon Congress to do just that.
Sustained increases in funding for the NIH and NCI will allow researchers and scientists to continue to fund cures and treatments that will save millions of lives. It is essential that our Members of Congress provide leadership on this issue, giving hope to the nearly 1.7 million American who will be diagnosed with cancer this year.
After months of delay and hard negotiations, Congress has finally passed a funding bill! The bill includes a small increase for cancer research and prevention programs.