WASHINGTON – April 28, 2010 – With the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services (LHHS) holding a hearing today to focus on national medical research priorities, families affected by cancer are calling on their elected officials to sustain the current level of support for research so that progress in the fight against cancer will not be stalled.
National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins is expected to provide oral testimony that supports President Obama’s proposed budget, which represents an important step toward maintaining progress in the development of innovative treatments and new screening tools. However, the funding level proposed in the President’s budget does not keep pace with funding included in the economic stimulus bill – money that has spurred new research projects and trials and created jobs in communities across the country.
“We’ve made tremendous strides in recent decades in discovering tools to detect many cancers early when they are easier to treat and survive,” said John R. Seffrin, PhD, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN). “As a result, there are nearly 11 million cancer survivors in the U.S. today. To reach the goal of reducing death and suffering related to all cancers nationwide, we must invest in areas where we don’t have answers and commit to sustained federal funding that will promote scientific discovery.”
Each year, 1.4 million people in America are told they have cancer, and 560,000 people die from the disease. To ensure that new, innovative projects created with economic stimulus funding are not short-circuited, it is critical for Congress to make funding for cancer research a top national priority.
“After years of significant scientific advances against cancer, we can’t afford to reverse progress against a disease that affects far too many Americans,” said Robert E. Youle, a cancer survivor and volunteer chair of ACS CAN’s Board of Directors.
ACS CAN is calling on Congress to build on the President’s proposal to fund cancer research in a way that sustains funding provided last year in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
ACS CAN, the nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy affiliate of the American Cancer Society, supports evidence-based policy and legislative solutions designed to eliminate cancer as a major health problem. ACS CAN works to encourage elected officials and candidates to make cancer a top national priority. ACS CAN gives ordinary people extraordinary power to fight cancer with the training and tools they need to make their voices heard. For more information, visit www.fightcancer.org.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Steven Weiss
(202) 661-5711
[email protected]
Christina Saull
(202) 585-3250
[email protected]
