Cancer

CANCER

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, again I commend Senator Specter for his many years of hard work, his efforts, and his success in increasing the funding for the crown jewel of the Federal Government, and that is the National Institutes of Health. Certainly, no one has fought harder and longer to ensure that our National Institutes of Health get the funding they need for the cutting-edge research that is saving so many lives.

It was under Senator Specter's leadership that we embarked upon a program to double the NIH funding over 5 years. People said it could not be done, but we did it.

Now we are up there and there seems to be some idea that somehow since we did that—the reason we did that was that NIH had fallen so far behind in the number of peer-reviewed grants that were being approved and funded. So we got them back up to where they were at least 20 years ago. Some think now we have them up there, we do not have to fund them anymore and we can start falling back again. The purpose of the Specter amendment is to bring the NIH up and keep them on a track that will not allow them to fall back again.

The Senate bill will increase funding for NIH by $1 billion; that is 3.7 percent. It will be the smallest percentage increase for NIH since 1995. This is the wrong time to put the squeeze on NIH funding. Doing so will severely impact NIH's ability to award new research grants at the very time when scientists should be taking full advantage of everything they have learned over the past 5 years to translate that research into treatments and cures.

Under the Senate bill, the number of new and competing nonbiodefense research grants would actually drop from 9,902 in fiscal year 2003 to 9,827 in fiscal year 2004. That is why Senator Specter, Senator Feinstein, Senator Collins, and I are offering an amendment to add $1.5 billion more for NIH.

This additional funding is critical to ensuring that researchers can continue the remarkable pace of medical advances during the past 5 years, as I said, when we doubled the funding for NIH. Perhaps most importantly, the doubling of the funding helped result in the completion of the final DNA sequence of the human genome. That was done during that period of time.

In the past 5 years, NIH research has led directly to new knowledge about the dangers of hormone replacement therapy for millions of American women, contradicting commonly accepted medical practice.

NIH research supported the development of new techniques for bone marrow transplantation.

NIH research demonstrated that intense therapy of type 1 diabetes can reduce long-term diabetes complications by at least 75 percent.

NIH research has now enabled scientists to identify several genes that increase vulnerability to schizophrenia.

I guess what I am saying is we are truly on the brink of a golden age in medical research with the mapping and sequencing of
the human genes and other measures funded by NIH. But those opportunities are threatened if we don't maintain NIH funding at a reasonable level.

The impact of the bill's dramatic slowing in the growth of the NIH budget will be particularly devastating in the areas of clinical research where, again, the fruits of our investment in medical research are applied to improving the health of the American people.

A crash landing in NIH funding sends a chilling message to young scientists in training and those just entering the research field. Scientific competition will always be fierce, but young scientists must be sure that sufficient funding will be available or exceptionally talented young people will begin to pursue other careers.

So again I rise in strong support of Senator Specter's amendment, along with Senator Feinstein, and I hope the Senate will adopt this very modest but very meaningful increase in funding for the National Institutes of Health.

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Mr. HARKIN. I thank the chairman for yielding and I, too, thank Senator Stevens for his kind and generous remarks regarding the subcommittee and especially applaud him for all the glowing terms he used about our staff on both sides of the aisle. They are just outstanding staff. They work very hard on this bill every year. But they have not worked any harder in any year than this year because, as Chairman Stevens said, this is a very large bill and a very complicated bill. It covers just about everything from soup to nuts in our society.

They have done a great job. I, too, compliment our respective staffs and thank them for all their hard work. I want to repay in kind the kind words Senator Specter just said. We have had a back and forth chairmanship/ranking member now going back 13 years. It has been a seamless transfer of the gavel. We worked very closely together all these years to increase funding for NIH, to meet our commitments in education, to meet our commitments in health care.

This bill, I have often said, is the bill that really defines America. I have often said that we always have a Defense Appropriations Committee bill. The Defense Appropriations Committee bill is the bill that defends America. This bill that funds the Department of Education that our colleague from Tennessee headed—I remember when he was Secretary of Education—and the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Labor, NIH, libraries—everything, I always said this is the bill that defines America. It defines who we are as a people and how much we are going to invest in our human resources in this country.

So I thank Senator Specter for his dynamic leadership of this subcommittee, for his vision, for his hard work in making sure we have a bill that is—not perfect. Obviously, I don't think anyone here has gotten everything they want out of this bill; that is true. But it is a true compromise, and that is what should define what we do here in the Senate, is compromise between the various interests we represent and the various States. I think that is truly what this bill does this year, and I thank Senator Specter for his great leadership getting this bill together.

I yield the floor.

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Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, emergency, like beauty, sometimes is in the eye of the beholder. Quite frankly, to this Senator, every single penny we put into NIH is an emergency. If you do not believe me, go out and talk to a family with a child that just came down with juvenile diabetes and see if you do not think what we spend at NIH is an emergency.

Talk to a woman who has just discovered she has breast cancer and is facing an uncertain future. Tell her that funding of NIH is not an emergency. Talk to someone who has suffered an injury who is now quadriplegic. They are looking for help to once again be whole again through some of the great research being done through NIH. Tell them this is not an
emergency. Go out and talk to a family who has a loved one who has just come down with Alzheimer's disease not knowing
what the future is going to be. A mother, father, grandparents, looking forward to the debilitating effects of Alzheimer's disease. Tell them that funding for NIH is not an emergency.

Whether or not this is an emergency is in the eye of the beholder. Think of the millions of Americans who have been afflicted with illness, disease, and injury who look to NIH for the treatments and cures; think about whether or not every single penny we spend on NIH is an emergency.

I yield the floor.