James M. Talent: “I rise today to honor Black History Month by supporting the Sickle Cell Treatment Act, which is S. 874, and inviting my…”

“I rise today to honor Black History Month by supporting the Sickle Cell Treatment Act, which is S. 874, and inviting my colleagues to join me and my chief cosponsor, Senator Schumer, in doing the same. I am very pleased we now have over 40 bipartisan cosponsors in the Senate for this bill. We certainly would welcome more. I invite our colleagues to look carefully at this act and to support it. It is an important measure. It deals with a disease that afflicts many hundreds of thousands of Americans and a disease that really has not received enough attention and enough visibility in the last few years. This bipartisan, bicameral legislation is designed to treat and find a comprehensive cure for sickle cell disease which is a genetic disease which primarily affects but not exclusively African Americans. About 1 in 300 newborn African-American infants is born with this disease, but the disease also affects people of Hispanic, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern ancestry, as well as Caucasians. More than 2.5 million Americans, mostly but again not exclusively African Americans, have the sickle cell trait, which is not the same as having the disease. Why focus on sickle cell disease? Because it is the most common genetic disease that is screened in American newborns.”