Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank Subcommittee Chairman Pitts for giving me the freedom to work on this. I appreciate it very much. It has been a year since last fall's fungal meningitis outbreak associated with the tainted sterile compounded drugs from the New England Compounding Center. In my district and in our area in Virginia, we had several deaths, we had 50 confirmed cases, and we had approximately 1,400 patients who were notified that they could have been exposed to fungal meningitis because they received tainted steroid injections. In working on this bill, I appreciated the bipartisan manner that we used to address this and to work on this matter, particularly with my colleagues across the aisle, Representatives Gene Green and Diana DeGette, for whom I am very grateful for all of their time and effort by both them and their staffs. I should also thank my staff member who worked on this most, which was Adam Harbison. Having said that, I agree with Mr. Dingell that it is a good bill and not a perfect bill, but I am glad to see that language from the Griffith-Green-DeGette effort was adopted and the FDA will be required to engage in meaningful communication with all of the States when potential problems are identified, as this has always been my priority.…”