Political Quotes

“I join with my colleague from Pennsylvania in recognizing that today, February 4, is World Cancer Day, a day in which we raise awareness about the impacts of cancer worldwide and join forces to work together to find a cure. If America does not lead the world in cancer research, there is no leadership in cancer research in the world. A newly released report from the American Cancer Society says that the death rate from cancer has decreased by 20 percent over the past two decades. Thirty years ago, less than 50 percent of those who were diagnosed with cancer lived beyond 5 years of their diagnosis. Today, it is 65 percent for adults and 80 percent for children. Cancer research needs to be sustained if it is to be effective. Ten years ago, 25 percent of all those grants that came into the National Cancer Institute were funded. Today it is less than 8 percent. We are not only losing important research but also losing talented researchers who leave the field because of a lack of public funding for cancer research. Historically, there were three ways to deal with cancer. You could cut it out through surgery, you could burn it out through radiation, or you could destroy it through toxic chemicals or chemotherapy. Chemotherapy was developed in Buffalo in 1904 at Roswell Park Cancer Institute. After those traditional cancer treatments, with some debilitating side effects, a new generation about 15 years ago was developed to treat cancer called targeted therapies.…”