Chuck Grassley: “a few times every year I come to the floor to compliment the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine. I am here…”

“a few times every year I come to the floor to compliment the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine. I am here again to do it. It has, once again, shown that it is a leader in medicine and advancing new treatments. As the cofounder and cochair of the Senate's Cystic Fibrosis Caucus, I take a keen interest in cystic fibrosis treatment advances. Dr. Michael Welsh at the University of Iowa has recently received several awards for his research on cystic fibrosis that has paved the way for new therapies, which is transforming the lives of people with cystic fibrosis. Most recently, Dr. Welsh received the 2025 Lasker- DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award. Dr. Lasker's awards are sometimes called 'America's Nobels' and are among the world's most prestigious biomedical and clinical research awards. Cystic fibrosis is a lethal genetic disease that affects a person's lungs, pancreas, and other organs and typically results in morbidity and even mortality. Until recently, living with cystic fibrosis was challenging and often led to infections in lungs that were very difficult to treat. Thanks to Dr. Welsh's research, we can now target cystic fibrosis at the molecular level that has resulted in 90 percent of cystic fibrosis patients benefiting from the new and improved treatments. Doctors no longer treat only a person's symptoms, they actually correct a person's defective gene through treatment discovered by Dr. Welsh.”