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REMARKS BY: TOMMY G. THOMPSON, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES PLACE: National Dialogue on Cancer, Washington, D.C. DATE: May 4, 2001
It was wonderful working with President Bush while I was governor of Wisconsin. We did good work together. I look forward to doing more good work with another man we all respect and appreciate, your son, our President, George W. Bush.
The Bush's leadership in bringing the NDC into being is known to all of us and is another reason why all Americans are proud of them and grateful to them.
Our current President has said he gave his mom her white hair. Mrs. Bush, after working for your son for a few months, I'm beginning to understand how you feel.
It's also a pleasure to see Senator Dianne Feinstein. Her leadership in the NDC has been one of the main factors for its success. I'm looking forward to working with you, Senator.
My involvement in the NDC has been a source of great inspiration to me, as well as being very humbling. As a Collaborating Partner, it's been wonderful to see how the NDC has become a force in our country's commitment to fight cancer. The leadership of the NDC has done tremendous work in bringing so many people and groups together in a common cause. America is in your debt.
This is an historic meeting. In this room are the men and women in the private sector, the public sector and the not-for-profit community who are at the forefront of the fight. We all need to be here. Federal agencies - including the national cancer institute, which is part of HHS - pharmaceutical companies, people in the media and, of course, cancer research and cancer survivor groups. None of us can do the job alone. But together, we form a powerful alliance against a common enemy, the ravaging disease called cancer.
Let me say at the outset that I need your help. I value your counsel and appreciate your years of experience. We are on the verge of implementing treatments that will change the way we deal with cancer patients. I'll talk about that more in a moment. But please know that I consider myself - and HHS - your partners in the truest sense of the word.
Before I talk with you about what the Administration is doing in our fight against cancer, let me make two personal observations.
First, I come from Elroy, Wisconsin, a town of about 1,500 people. In Elroy, you can dial a wrong number and still end up talking for half an hour.
When you come from a small town like Elroy, you gain a perspective on life you never lose. People in small towns aren't statistics or numbers on a page. They're real individuals. When someone gets a disease like cancer, it affects the whole community because you know that person. And that person is an integral part of the community.
As a governor and now as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, I've carried that knowledge with me. Public policies affect real people, not nameless lines in an actuarial table.
But let me offer an even more personal observation. My wife Sue Ann is a long-time breast cancer survivor. I know from my own experience what it's like to be told that a person you love has cancer. I know the courage it takes to fight the disease. And I know the joy of seeing Sue Ann win her fight.
That victory would not have been possible without the help of dedicated people like you. Without the physicians, nurses, researchers and advanced treatments that work to thwart a deadly disease - cancer.
We all know how high the stakes are. Every year, 1.2 million Americans develop some form of cancer. One of every four deaths that occur annually is cancer-related. That's 550,000 people.
But there's good news, as well. There are some astonishing new treatment possibilities, such as treating cancer at the genetic level and eliminating diseased cells while protecting healthy ones.
Then there's monoclonal antibody research. According to one recent report, it's now possible to develop monoclonal antibodies and attach radioactive iodine to them. These antibodies deliver the radiation to lymphoma cells, killing them directly. University of Michigan researchers studied 32 people treated in this way and found that 24 of them - three-quarters of the total - were completely lymphoma-free after six months.
Of course, these amazing developments don't tell the whole story. We're not out of the woods yet, or else we wouldn't be here today. So let me talk with you a bit about what HHS is doing to combat cancer and what our agenda is for the future.
President George W. Bush has submitted an aggressive, forward-looking budget that's designed to boost anti-cancer efforts as never before. The 2002 budget provides $23.1 billion for the National Institutes of Health, a $2.75 billion increase over 2001 and the largest ever for NIH. Our funding for NIH includes 34,000 research grants, the most ever provided.
But the President wants to go further than that. His budget blueprint calls for doubling NIH funding from the 1998 funding level by 2003. A cornerstone of this year's NIH budget is an increase of $514 million for cancer-related research in 2002. That's a nearly 12 percent increase over the previous year.
We've also added $10 million to the program that protects patients in clinical trials, which increases from 1,200 to nearly 1,500 the number of annual inspections of clinical investigators, institutional review boards and other participants in the clinical trial process.
The Food and Drug Administration is also going to improve its coordination with the NIH to better monitor all gene therapy trials. These are substantial increases and administrative improvements. The President's budget reflects how serious he is about waging a winning war against cancer. The President is sending a clear message: he doesn't just want us treating a disease - he wants us beating a disease - especially such an onerous disease as cancer.
Our budget also includes funds to continue the revitalization of key facilities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. I visited the CDC recently and was surprised to learn that the Atlanta headquarters are distributed among 22 different buildings.
I'm sure that the Atlanta taxi industry is pleased by that kind of geographic diffusion. But our job is not to help Atlanta cabbies. It's to provide funding so that the CDC can fulfill its mission of preventing and controlling disease, injury and disability.
In the President's budget, he is asking for support to build a laboratory facility dedicated to handling the most highly infectious pathogens as well as construction of an environmental toxicology lab. We want to bring the facilities of the CDC together so its scientists can work together more closely and effectively.
On a broader level, the President's budget seeks to improve access to basic health care - so illness and diseases such as cancer can be diagnosed and treated as early as possible. For example, we're increasing funding for the nation's 3,200 community health centers by $124 million this year. The President wants to increase and expand the number of health center sites by 1,200.
This is a tremendous goal and, if Congress approves our requested funding, an attainable one. And it's an important goal because it will help deliver quality care to people in some of our neediest communities.
The president is also working to strengthen - and begin modernizing - Medicare and expand access to health care for millions of lower-income Americans.
But the budget we're proposing goes beyond numbers and programs. It's about innovation and effectiveness and even moral courage. We can no longer be content with doing things as they've always been done.
That's comfortable, unthreatening and politically safe. It's also irresponsible, shortsighted and self- protecting - exactly the things that are wrong with Washington's way of doing business. President Bush is here to change the way Washington works. He's here to solve problems. And because of his leadership, there's a new tone in Washington, a civility that's been missing for too long.
Let me close with a story that illustrates why we're here this morning. If you ever want to spend time learning from some modern-day heroines, visit the "World Walk for Breast Cancer" site on the Internet. It carries stories of women who have triumphed over breast cancer. One of them is by a woman named Cindi Meyer of Oklahoma City. She learned she had breast cancer two weeks before giving birth to her son, Austin.
Her story is a testimony to tenacity and courage. She had wonderful care - her oncologist even gave her a prescription for a wig!
Cindi went through a painful battle I'll not describe in detail. The specifics are all too familiar. But the good news is that she won her battle. Listen to how Cindi describes her own involvement in the fight against cancer:
"Now it has been 8 years and Austin, too, is 8. For the past 2 years he has joined me in the Race for the Cure event held each fall. And since he is my ultimate co-survivor, he wears the (Race for the Cure) co- survivor hat." From breast cancer in the maternity ward to running against the disease - that's what I call success.
Cindi, her husband Mark and their son Austin have hope because people like you - caregivers, researchers, administrators, support group leaders, public servants and many others - are not content to sit by and let people like them suffer.
Like my wife Sue Ann, Cindi Meyer as been blessed with a victory over cancer. But so many others have not. We need to persevere until the threat of cancer is much more distant and much less severe. With your help, that's exactly what the President and my colleagues and I at HHS intend to do.
It's wonderful to be with you. The N-D-C is one of America's finest organizations. Thanks for sponsoring this tremendous conference. God bless you.