Connie Mack

Mr. MACK

Mr. MACK. That is correct.

Mr. MACK. I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be set aside.

Mr. MACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. MACK. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. MACK. I would like to have a recorded vote. This evening would be fine. My only question would be, are we really fixing a time at 9 o'clock or----

Mr. MACK. Very good.

Mr. MACK. Sometime after that?

Mr. MACK. I have already received requests of at least an hour.

Mr. MACK

Mr. MACK. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that further reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. MACK. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to Senator Durbin.

Mr. MACK. I yield 5 minutes to Senator Collins.

Mr. MACK. I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from California, Senator Feinstein.

Mr. MACK. I now yield 5 minutes to Senator Frist of Tennessee.

Mr. MACK. I say to the Chair that I believe the Senator from Pennsylvania has three amendments.

Mr. MACK. Madam President, I have no objection to allowing the Senator from Vermont to proceed at this point.

Mr. MACK. Madam President, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. MACK. I ask unanimous consent that no second-degree amendments to this amendment be in order.

Mr. MACK. Madam President, I offer this amendment on behalf of myself and the following Senators: Senators Feinstein, Kennedy, Frist, Specter, Harkin, D'Amato, DeWine, Boxer, Collins, Durbin, Reid, Breaux, and Dorgan. Madam President, let me quickly state the amendment is a sense-of- the-Senate resolution. Let me just say to my colleagues that I recognize that what we are doing here is merely making a statement. But I think it is an important statement to be made. This has to do with a sense of the Senate about doubling the investment in the National Institutes of Health over the next 5 years. It further States that it is our intent that the investments of the National Institutes of Health be increased by $2 billion in this next fiscal year. I begin my remarks, as I do often about this issue, by speaking about my own personal experiences, in essence, what motivates me to offer this sense-of-the-Senate resolution. Before I get into those kinds of personal feelings, maybe I ought to share with my colleagues an experience that I had just a few months ago, the last hearing that the Senate--at least I believe it was--the last hearing that the Senate held in the 104th Congress. It was a hearing that was chaired by Senator Hatfield and Senator Cohen, and it was a hearing to raise the awareness of the American people about the advantages and the needs of more research dollars. General Schwarzkopf was one of those individuals who testified. He, in essence, said that one of these days the American people are going to realize how little we have invested in basic research in health care, in health care research, health research in this country, how little we have done. He said, in essence, when they find that out, they are going to be mad as hell and they are going to want something done about it. I have spent many years now here in the Senate trying to raise the voices of concern, and the time has now come, frankly, that another year cannot pass without this Congress and this Senate making a commitment to doubling the investment at the National Institutes of Health. And I say so in recognizing I do this from an emotional perspective because I, like so many others, represent families that have been devastated by disease. In my particular case, I am talking about cancer. Since the last time I spoke on the floor of the Senate about this issue I lost another member of my family to the disease. I lost my father, who died at the age of 83 with esophageal cancer. I remember at a particular moment as he was fighting the disease, and I guess this moment comes for most of us, dad realized regardless of all the advantages and all the breakthroughs that have taken place with research, that frankly nothing more could be done for him. One of the doctors suggested what they needed to do next was to insert a feeding tube into his stomach. Dad's reaction to the doctor was, ``That's not going to happen to me. I have lived a pretty good life. I have raised eight children,'' and he said with a little grin, ``They have all done pretty well. So I look upon my life as one that has been pretty successful.'' He said, ``It's time for me to die. I'm going back home. I'm not going to stay in the hospital. I'm not going to eat anything else. I'm not going to drink anything else. It is time for me to die. I accept that.'' That was totally different than the experience that I had with my younger brother who died of melanoma at the age of 35. At that age, I guess it is almost impossible to give up. You have a sense that you have got to fight every step of the way. Maybe there will be a discovery made is the sense of what people feel. I can tell you as a member of the family, I sure was hopeful, each day, maybe a new procedure, maybe a new experimental drug would come along and save my brother Michael's life, who for 12 years, from the age of 23, on knew that each year could be the year in which he would lose his life. So I say today, Madam President, I can no longer be kind of quiet about this issue. I realize I am here today speaking about my own personal experiences, but in essence I represent every family in America. Why are we taking this? Why have we, as a Nation, said over and over and over again we do not have the money to invest in this kind of research? We are talking about $2 billion more in this next fiscal year--$2 billion more, and we are told we do not have the money. Now I know how difficult it is going to be to find it. I do not mean to be underestimating that. But if our Nation made the commitment to do it we could find the resources to invest $2 billion more at the National Institutes of Health. As I say, my story is a story about cancer. I was diagnosed with the same cancer that killed my brother, within months after I came to the U.S. Senate. And I would say this, if it had not have been for Michael's death, I probably would have been the one who died because I would not have been sensitive to the information on the early warning signs of the disease. I would have ignored the mole on my side until maybe it was too late. All I am saying is I do not think we as a Nation should ignore the warning signs. You can talk about Parkinson's disease, and many of us have had the opportunity to talk with Morton Kondracke or with Joan Samuelson. In my case, a dear friend, Bob Finkernagle, another dear friend, Pat Hucker, whose wife is suffering with the disease. There have been tremendous breakthroughs with respect to Parkinson's disease but there is a lot more out there that can be discovered, a lot more that can be done. During these past several years I have had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Varmas, Dr. Klausner, Francis Collins, all out at the National Institutes of Health, and as you listen to them talk about breakthrough after breakthrough after breakthrough you cannot help but be excited about what the opportunities are for further investments in medical research. There is a gene known at the P-53 gene with respect to cancer. Interestingly enough, this gene, when it malfunctions, when it is mutated, has been found in somewhere between 50 percent and 80 percent of all cancers. It is a tumor suppressor gene and research scientists all across America and around the world are, in fact, trying to figure out the mechanism. They have indicated that in their tests in the laboratory that when a P-53 gene that is not mutated is placed in with other cells it, in fact, stops the growth of those cells. More money needs to be invested to find out whether P-53 holds a key for a cure. What can be the benefits from more research? One of the things that would happen is that we would see that the number of people that participate in clinical trials would go from 2 percent to 20 percent. What does that mean to the average person? Well, it means that some mother or some father or some brother, some sister, might have an opportunity to have drugs that are available on the market but only through a clinical trial. We would increase from 2 percent to 20 percent if we were to double the investment at NIH. The number of grants that would be approved would jump from 25 percent to 40 percent. More access to state-of-the-art care, ability for the research centers to attract new talent. I could go on and on. The point here is this, and I will close my comments at this time, with another story from that same hearing that I referred to a little bit earlier. There was an individual on that panel with General Schwarzkopf by the name of Travis Roy. Travis Roy is a young man whose dream it was to play ice hockey in Boston, and he succeeded. Unfortunately, in the first 11 seconds of a game he was hit in such a manner that he is paralyzed from the neck down. He said to the Members at that hearing, to the panel, that his dream was to be able to hug his mother again someday. You know something, if we had listened to that 15 years ago, our reaction, sure, we would have had the compassion and the concern for that young man, but in the back of our mind we would have said, but you know there is nothing we can do about it. Well, something dramatically has changed in America. We no longer believe that there is nothing we can do about it. We have seen so much happen in the field of research that we now believe there are opportunities all across the board in all different kinds of diseases for breakthroughs that will save lives. Today, I had the opportunity to listen to a physician by the name of LaSalle LaFalle, a former President of the American Cancer Society. He said, ``When I was trained, I was told that there was no cure for leukemia, that everyone died from leukemia. Hodgkin's disease, everyone died from Hodgkin's disease.'' We know now the cure rate of leukemia is around 60 percent, and Hodgkin's disease is 80 percent. That is a result of the investments we made in basic research. I ask my colleagues to support this sense-of-the-Senate resolution. I yield the floor.

Mr. MACK. Yes.

Mr. MACK. I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Pennsylvania.

Mr. MACK. Mr. President, let me say to my friend and colleague from New York that Senator Frist was--2 minutes? All right.

Mr. MACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to add Senator Domenici, Senator Gramm, and Senator Thurmond as cosponsors.

Mr. MACK. Yes, I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. MACK. As I listened to the discussion, and most of you heard me go through some of my experiences, I will never forget the moment that my wife told me she had discovered a lump in her breast and the doctor had told her that she had cancer. The sense of terror that gripped both of us, the sense of fear that we experienced--and I must say to you, there were a lot of selfish feelings going on inside me. I thought that I was going to lose my wife, that she would die of cancer. That is the reaction most people have when they are told they have cancer. I thought I was going to lose her. And so I wonder to myself, knowing what we know today, the breakthroughs that have already taken place in research, what keeps us from doubling the investment at NIH? Why will people accept the notion that we cannot do more? I just cannot comprehend that. And so I would ask my colleagues tonight to support this sense-of-the-Senate resolution, recognizing that it is only the first step in a long, hard fight to find the dollars to double the investment in the National Institutes of Health. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. MACK. If I could just make a couple of brief comments and then we will be through.