Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise to recognize the 25th anniversary of the National Center for Biotechnology Information--NCBI--part of the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, America's world-renowned research institution in Bethesda, MD. The late Senator Claude Pepper, for whom a major building on the NIH campus is named, authored six separate laws creating individual institutes at NIH. In 1987, while a Member of the House of Representatives and chairman of the Select Committee on Aging's Subcommittee on Health and Long-Term Care, Pepper introduced H.R. 393, the National Biotechnology Information Act, which established the NCBI. At a March 1987 hearing on H.R. 393, Pepper explained that ``we are dealing with nothing less than the mystery of human life and the unfolding scroll of knowledge, seeking to penetrate that mystery, which is life itself.'' He noted that his bill was intended ``to facilitate the development of advanced computer and communication systems that will make it possible for the vast expanding knowledge of the gene to be assimilated into a computer system and made available for distribution to researchers and to people generally all over the World.'' Soon thereafter, Congress embraced the importance of the biotechnology field, recognized the pressing need to harness the large volume of data emanating from the genetic revolution in science, and endorsed the establishment of NCBI to manage this valuable resource for the benefit of human healt…”