Political Quotes

“in 2013, in my first year in the Senate, a 10-year-old child in Virginia, Loudoun County, named Gabriella Miller passed away from an inoperable brain tumor. Nothing could be worse for a family. Her parents, Ellyn and Mark, and her brother suffered greatly in this. But as many do, in an amazing way, in a mysterious way, in a time of suffering, they turned their tragedy into a cause. Shortly after I came to the Senate, Mark and Ellyn Miller came to see me and talk to me about their daughter Gabriella. They asked me a question: Senator, what percentage of medical research in this country is devoted to pediatric conditions? I thought, well, you know, pediatric--under age 18. Maybe it is 12 percent of the population. So I guessed 12 percent. They said: Less than 1 percent. Less than 1 percent of medical research funding in the NIH and other Agencies was devoted to pediatric conditions. There was kind of a--I don't know--it was a conventional wisdom of: No, we don't put research into that, but if we can research adult conditions, we can kind of apply it to pediatric conditions--which everyone here knows that is not the case. Many pediatric conditions are very different than adult conditions. So I began to work with the Miller family on a bill to increase research at the NIH and other Federal Agencies for pediatric conditions, especially pediatric conditions of the kind that killed Gabriella Miller.…”