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| Statement of the National Breast Cancer Coalition On the Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Act |
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For Immediate Release Contact: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it (202) 973-0588 September 27, 2008 After nearly a decade of fighting to pass the Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Act, the National Breast Cancer Coalition is disappointed that the version of the bill that passed both the House and Senate is not the bill that had the support of NBCC, or of 287 Members of Congress and 70 Senators. We greatly appreciate the time and efforts of those who have worked for so many years to pass legislation that would create an innovative approach to examining the links between breast cancer and the environment. The bill that ultimately was enacted into law, does not accomplish the goals set out by the NBCC-supported legislation. The bill that was enacted does not create the grant program or structure that would produce a coherent, national strategy to address the possible links between breast cancer and the environment. It does not focus solely on breast cancer and the environment. While it may be a small step toward some type of reform, it ultimately misses an opportunity to create an innovative model at NIH that could potentially lead to the answers we so desperately need. Since the original bill was introduced, almost 2 million women have been diagnosed with breast cancer and close to 300,000 have died. We still do not know what causes breast cancer, how to prevent it or how to treat it effectively or cure it. Because of this impact on women and their families, the National Breast Cancer Coalition is committed to do whatever it takes to eradicate breast cancer as soon as possible. Now that the President has signed this version of the bill into law, NBCC will determine how best to use it as a tool to help achieve the goals of the NBCC-supported version of the bill. Since its inception, the National Breast Cancer Coalition has been fighting to change the systems of breast cancer research to cultivate and nurture innovation, inspire new thinking and new investigators, and encourage multi-disciplinary collaborations. NBCC believes that if the status quo remains in place at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), we will never eradicate breast cancer. The system we proposed in the NBCC- supported Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Act would have changed that status quo, using as a model proven, innovative approaches to the allocation of scientific resources. The NBCC-supported Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Act took that successful model and applied it to the vital and difficult question of what about our environment causes breast cancer. The legislation would have supported a new research model that would ensure that public funds were spent responsibly and strategically, moving away from the isolated research approaches followed over the past many years. The bill described an approach and grant program that had been successful elsewhere, and that would likely get answers to these critical questions in a timely, scientifically valid way. Finally, the bill was intended to demonstrate to the scientific community at NIH the importance and success of models that include trained, educated advocates at all levels of decision-making. The bill went through many years of negotiations. Most recently, as negotiated with NIH and passed by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, the bill maintained its original intent as described above to establish a grant program that would result in a strategic, national approach to studying the potential links between the environment and breast cancer. It would have brought to the NIH a different – and proven – way of doing things and of responsibly spending taxpayer dollars. NBCC supported the HELP-passed version of the bill. The National Breast Cancer Coalition and its hundreds of member organizations and tens of thousands of individual members are not alone in advocating for changes at NIH. Billions of dollars have been spent at NIH on cancer research and yet, progress in fighting the disease has been incremental. Recent articles in Newsweek and Time highlight the need for creative, innovative, new approaches: “There is no more common refrain among critics of how the war on cancer has been waged: that innovative ideas, ideas that might be grand slams but carry the risk of striking out, are rejected by NCI in favor of projects that promise singles.” (Newsweek, Sept. 8, 2008, Sharon Begley) We need answers, and it is clear that the crown jewel of our nation’s biomedical research system needs some polishing – and maybe even a new setting – in order to get them. Trying new ideas is sometimes risky – they don’t always work. But, what also hasn’t worked is business as usual. The approach set forth in the NBCC-supported Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Act would have been a step toward a new direction at NIH. Unfortunately, it appears that key members of Congress view NIH as sacrosanct. The public has little knowledge of where NIH funding goes, and not for want of trying to find out. The mechanisms for research have been static. NIH needs to be more open to innovation and the NBCC-supported bill would have been a small step toward introducing a proven research model, and a new way of thinking at NIH. We had thought that a bill with 287 bipartisan House cosponsors and 70 Senate cosponsors and with both sides of the aisle publicly praising the Senate HELP-passed version, could have resulted in an agreement that maintained the core principles of that legislation. We will do all we can to ensure that the legislation that Congress ultimately passed will be a tool to help achieve the original legislative goals, to answer the critical questions about the environmental affect breast cancer and to bring about needed change at NIH. We at the National Breast Cancer Coalition, whose mission is to eradicate breast cancer and save women’s lives, will continue our work to ensure that policymakers in Congress and at the NIH use their power to answer these questions rapidly. We will monitor, participate, agitate and publicize how the law that passed is being implemented, and what steps are needed to achieve our goals and we will continue to hold policymakers in Congress and at the NIH accountable. www.StopBreastCancer.org |