Political Quotes

“Mr. Higgins, thank you for sharing your thoughts on this dreaded disease for which there is no known cure and there is no way to diagnose it until it is present. You cannot get ahead of this illness, but there are ways we can make progress. You pointed out what has happened over the last decade with extraordinary research efforts, and this chart really lays it out there as to where we are. For breast cancer, we have seen a decline of 2 percent in breast cancer deaths; prostate cancer, an 8 percent decline; heart disease, a 16 percent decline; stroke, 23 percent decline; and then one of the great victories, HIV/AIDS, a 42 percent decline in the number of deaths. This is the result of research, an extraordinary amount of research going on, not only in the United States but around the world, resulting in significant drops in the death rates for those diseases. On the other hand, Alzheimer's, where we have just over $500 million of research, we have seen a 68 percent increase in the death rates. This is the story of Alzheimer's. This is the challenge that we face. This is the challenge that every American family faces and our communities. We will talk more about this a little later. The cochair of the Alzheimer's Task Force here in the Congress of the United States is the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Maxine Waters), who has joined us this evening to talk about the work that the task force is doing and her own commitment to this profoundly important issue.…”