Johnny Isakson: “this is somewhat of an unorthodox way to ask for a UC, but we are going to go through a process this afternoon talking…”

“this is somewhat of an unorthodox way to ask for a UC, but we are going to go through a process this afternoon talking about a bill called the Pediatric Rare Disease Priority Review Voucher Act, which expires on September 30 of this year. All of those names I just mentioned have a stake in this particular debate and I am going to lead it off. Then, I am actually going to refer to my colleague from Pennsylvania, Senator Casey, my friend and coauthor of this legislation for the purposes of the UC motion, and then we will go from there. Mr. President, I fell in love with my wife in 1968 and married her 48 years ago. We have had a great marriage. But in 2004, I fell in love with Alexa Rohrbach, the young lady to my left who you can see on the screen here. Alexa had neuroblastoma, an incurable cancer of the brain. She came to Washington, DC, lobbying us to try to accelerate the research into rare diseases for children and to try to find cures for them. I got interested, and I went to the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, PA, where Senator Casey is so active. I am active in children's health care in Atlanta, and I saw many of the breakthroughs for cancer and other diseases of children. Bob Casey and I got very interested in seeing what we could do to further the development of new drugs coming into the marketplace to save lives and make the quality of life better.…”