Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman from Louisiana for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I have two special investments in this bill, Improving Access to Clinical Trials Act. One is being a physician, a family physician for 34 years. The other is that I have a grandson who was born with cystic fibrosis almost a year to the day. He was born essentially clinically dead. His bowels, his colon had ruptured in utero as a result of his cystic fibrosis. He was delivered. It was an emergency delivery. He spent the first two months of his life in the NICU. Several times we thought we would lose him. He has had a rocky course since then. Today, as a child of a year old, he is catching up with all of his developmental milestones. His health is good, relatively speaking. And he is a beautiful young blessing to my family. He still has a very rocky course. We know some of the statistics having to do with cystic fibrosis. There are approximately 30,000 people today with this disease. In the 1950s, children rarely lived beyond kindergarten with this disease. Today, the average age is 37. We see people even in their sixties with cystic fibrosis. More than 30 percent of the potential therapies that we have are in the CF drug development pipeline today, many wonderful therapies. We can even see over the horizon that we may some day have a cure within our lifetime. {time} 1140 In the next 2 to 3 years, we will need more than 7,000 cystic fibrosis patients to participate in the clinical trials.…”