Connie Mack: “Mr, President, as many of my colleagues are aware, cancer has played a prominent role in my family's history. Some in…”

“Mr, President, as many of my colleagues are aware, cancer has played a prominent role in my family's history. Some in our family--me, my wife Priscilla, our daughter Debbie--have been lucky enough to have fought cancer and won. Others in our family have not been so lucky. My father died of esophageal cancer, my mother died of kidney cancer and my younger brother Michael died of melanoma at the very young age of thirty-five. As a result, Priscilla and I have become very active in the fight against cancer and in spreading the message that early detection saves lives. It's a part of who we are as a family. And there are other families with their own stories. Michael J. Fox and his family are waging war against Parkinson's disease. Mary Tyler Moore and her family are fighting diabetes. Christopher Reeve and his family are searching for a cure to paralysis. And millions of other families across the United States are fighting their own battles against AIDS, sickle-cell anemia, Lou Gehrig's disease, Alzheimer's and the many, many other diseases that take our loved ones away from us. What I've come to realize in my fight against cancer is the crucial role the federal government plays in funding basic medical research at the National Institutes of Health, and how important basic research is to finding breakthroughs not just for cancer but for all of the diseases which affect our families. For several years now, doubling funding at NIH has been a primary goal of mine in the Senate.”