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U.S. Department of Health and Human Services | ||||
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| REMARKS BY: | TOMMY G. THOMPSON, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES |
| PLACE: | The National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland |
| DATE: | July 22, 2002 |
Let me say thank you to all of you here for the tremendous job you're doing. The NCI is one of the most valuable resources in the federal government. It's not often that you get to be involved in an activity that literally saves lives. It's an honor for me to join with you in your noble, inspiring work.
Dr. Snyder, we're so pleased you can be with us. As a distinguished professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine you have worked closely with Dr. Zerhouni … and as a Board member of the Foundation for the NIH, you have done so much to help advance America's leading-edge health research. We so appreciate your work and that of the FNIH.
Today's meeting is about partnership between public and private sectors. That's so very important, because cancer has touched the lives of everyone in this great country of ours.
Whether it's you, your mother or father, your sister or brother, your daughter or son, or a dear friend, cancer is a very personal disease. It affects each and every one of us.
Roughly 1.2 million Americans develop some form of cancer annually. One of every four deaths that occur in our country is cancer-related. That's 550,000 people each year.
In 2001 alone, the overall costs of fighting cancer were estimated to be nearly $160 billion. That's an astonishing figure - larger than the gross domestic products of all but a few nations on earth.
But the greater cost is in the immeasurable suffering of cancer patients and their families and loved ones as they struggle to survive and cope, and in the lost contributions of those who are taken from us much too soon.
That's why fighting cancer is an extraordinarily high priority for the President and for me. We appreciate being able to join with you so that, as partners, we can work in tandem toward our common goal - preventing and effectively treating cancer.
And it's in large part because of your exceptional leadership that we will.
So, today, I'm pleased to announce an unprecedented partnership between the National Cancer Institute and the pharmaceutical companies Aventis, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly and Novartis.
The wonderful organization "Friends of Cancer Research" and the Association of American Cancer Institutes promoted this initiative and fostered its partnership at every step, while the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health has brought the public and private sectors together.
The partnership has a lengthy name. It's called "Overcoming the Barriers to Early Phase Clinical Trials." Now, that's not very catchy. But the work it represents is absolutely essential.
This partnership will make excellent use of the NIH's research capabilities to speed progress toward new cancer therapies. The concept is simple: We want to increase the number of people who participate in early-phase clinical trials, thereby shortening the time it takes for promising therapies to move from the laboratory bench to the patient's bedside.
This partnership will provide funding to between five and eight cancer centers, enabling them to design innovative programs to accomplish this goal.
With only three to four percent of newly diagnosed adult cancer patients entering clinical trials each year, this unprecedented public/private partnership may give hundreds more cancer patients a chance to participate in early-phase clinical trials.
We are moving forward in working to arrest cancer at every level. And the President's budget is a major step in achieving that goal. Within the FY 2003 budget, we are requesting approximately $5.6 billion for research on cancer throughout the National Institutes of Health. This is an increase of almost $630 million, or nearly 13 percent, over the current year.
The good news is that rates of both new cancers and cancer deaths are falling overall. And we are no longer resigned to thinking of cancer as a death sentence.
Today, we can successfully treat or increase life expectancy for more than half of all cancer patients. That's a sign of the dramatic progress we have made, and continue to make.
Our party affiliation doesn't matter. Nor does our gender, our race or our ethnic heritage. What matters is our commitment to saving lives. And we are united together in our commitment to finding a cure in our lifetimes.
Thank you again so very much. I'm glad to take questions.