Dennis Kucinich: “Mr.Chairman, I rise today to join my colleagues in urging full funding of the National Children's Study. Two of the most…”

“Mr.Chairman, I rise today to join my colleagues in urging full funding of the National Children's Study. Two of the most important health studies ever conducted were large, ambitious epidemiological studies. The Framingham Study followed the health and risk factors of thousands of men and women for fifty years. The result has been a major change in the way we view, treat and prevent heart diseases. The Nurse's Study has monitored the health of over one hundred thousand women for decades. It, too, has resulted in unprecedented leaps forward in public health. Now, we must turn our attention to one of the biggest sources of public health threats of our time: our own environment. The National Children's study will follow 100,000 children from before birth until age 21. Similar to the Framingham study and the Nurse's study, it could yield giant steps forward in our efforts to solve some of the most complex and pervasive health problems of our time: obesity, asthma, and autism are just a few. And we could start to see results within a few years of data collection. Yet the study has been left in a holding pattern. In order to begin recruiting participants in the study, 69 million dollars is required for this year. Only 12 million dollars is provided in the FY 06 Labor HHS bill. I hope that the conference committee allocates 69 million dollars in the conference report for the FY 06 Labor HHS Appropriations bill to the National Children's Study.…”