Political Quotes

“Again, my thanks to my very distinguished colleague from Tennessee whose leadership and contribution to this bill has been instrumental from the very start. I welcome him and have been thankful for his partnership on this issue. As my colleague from Tennessee said so well, these antibiotic- resistant drugs are a spreading scourge. Reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that MRSA infections are responsible for more than 17,000 deaths in the United States every year--more than AIDS and many other diseases that are regarded as public health threats. All 50 States have seen rates of antibiotic- resistant E. coli infections double in less than 10 years. A lesser known bug, Acintobacter, a bacteria that affects increasing numbers of our troops serving in Iraq, has infected more than 700 of our servicemembers since 2003. The numbers are continuing to rise. Those numbers are alarming. I have some charts I will show in just a moment that will be even more graphic. But to put a human face on this problem, Jamel Sawyer, a former college football player from Norwalk, CT, knows all too well the crippling impact of these antibiotic- resistant infections. He was in school in Boston. He suffered from severe back pain and a rising temperature. He went to the hospital and was told he was suffering from a kind of antibiotic-resistant staph infection which surmounted multiple rounds of antibiotic treatment. He was left paralyzed and unable to walk.…”