Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to raise further awareness of an issue of great importance to this legislative body and to many of our constituents: the problem of drug shortages, specifically cancer drug shortages. As a physician, I know this has been a problem for decades, and there isn't one solution to the problem. Let me tell you some personal stories I have heard recently. I heard this month from a family in my district with a 5-year-old son battling pre-B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. For 2\1/2\ years now, the family has been facing heartbreaking challenges, which have been made significantly worse by shortages of generic medications. First, their son was supposed to receive cytarabine, also known as ARA-C. This is a generic chemotherapy medication the family should have been able to inject into the little boy's thigh at home, during a particularly fragile stage of their son's treatment. Instead, the family was informed that shortages would prevent them from obtaining that form of medication, and they would need to deliver all chemotherapy through a central port intravenous line. Repeated access to the central port line led to an infection and ultimately a 3-week hospital stay hundreds of miles from their home in Evansville, Indiana.…”