Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, I am wearing purple today in honor of World Alzheimer's Month. As a matter of fact, yesterday, September 21, was World Alzheimer's Day. So I have chosen today to introduce a bill that I hope will lead to a major breakthrough in fighting this terrible disease and treating and potentially curing Alzheimer's disease.

The legislation which I introduced this morning is called the EUREKA Act, which stands for Ensuring Useful Research Expenditures is Key for Alzheimer's--EUREKA.

I am taking this moment to briefly discuss the problem of Alzheimer's and to ask my colleagues to get behind this tripartisan legislation and see if we can create some momentum to cure Alzheimer's disease in a decade.

First of all, a little bit about awareness. As we all know, Alzheimer's is a 100-percent fatal disease. It affects some 36 million people around the globe. More than 5 million Americans currently have Alzheimer's disease. My mother died of Alzheimer's disease. I can tell you it is an incredibly personal trial for families who deal with loved ones suffering and ultimately succumbing to this disease. So there is the human cost which so many of us have experienced and are experiencing.

There is also the cost in dollars and cents. Americans will spend $226 billion from our Treasury on Alzheimer's this year alone. The disease puts an extraordinary burden on Medicare and Medicaid. As a matter of fact, one in five Medicare dollars will be spent this year on someone with Alzheimer's. Think of what we could do to alleviate the suffering our previous speaker was talking about if we didn't have to spend this $226 billion per year, if we didn't have to spend one in five of our Medicare dollars on someone with Alzheimer's. Consider the 2013 filing from the Rand Corporation. Direct costs of Alzheimer's exceed similar costs associated with cancer and heart disease combined.

According to Rush University, Alzheimer's is responsible for more than 500,000 deaths each year.

Without a cure or a way to halt this disease, these numbers will continue to grow. By 2050 Alzheimer's is expected to cost $1.1 trillion per year. By then, Medicare and Medicaid could see a 500-percent increase in Alzheimer's spending. So we have a problem in terms of dollars and cents, and we certainly have a problem in terms of the hardship it causes on families today.

Experts say we need $2 billion a year in public research if we are going to get to this goal of conquering Alzheimer's by 2025. We do the best we can at the National Institutes of Health, but we spend only $586 million a year on Alzheimer's research. We need $2 billion a year. We spend roughly a quarter of that amount each year, with very little prospect of getting it up to four times what we are spending now.

What is the solution? I believe the solution is to go to a concept that has made America great for decades and even centuries, and that is the American spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship and competition. We create, we build, and we make a difference in people's lives through competition and innovation. So today I have introduced the EUREKA bill, which would establish a national prize for achieving benchmarks in fighting this disease. I want to make it clear that the EUREKA Act would proceed on a parallel track with what is being done at NIH and the Federal Government in terms of research. It wouldn't take a penny away from the research dollars currently spent on Alzheimer's and the funds used to attack Alzheimer's in so many ways. It would be another route for a breakthrough by establishing a competition to run parallel to the research being done.

We will need to research some milestones before we arrive at an Alzheimer's cure. This bill would create a system within the government, with cooperation from NIH, to encourage public and private collaboration to help us establish prizes for milestones reached to conquer Alzheimer's. Of course, we need to remember that prizes are paid only for success. If we don't meet the milestones, we won't have to expend the money.

My excellent staff and I have been working for months with some of the leading experts in the United States on this concept, not the least of which is the XPRIZE Foundation, which has done such a good job in establishing breakthroughs in other areas. So we have the support and cooperation of the XPRIZE Foundation. In addition, we have worked with the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration to get as much information as possible, and we think we have come up with a way to have government-funded prizes to conquer this disease.

This is nothing new. The XPRIZE Foundation came along relatively recently, but it was inspired by previous examples of success. In 1927 Charles Lindbergh won $25,000 for his Spirit of St. Louis aircraft in a competition to achieve the first nonstop flight between New York City and Paris. He received a prize for this accomplishment. Today aviation is a $300 billion industry. So prizes are not a new strategy. The government already invests in countless areas, including health. As a matter of fact, the America COMPETES Act gives Federal agencies the authority to conduct prize-based challenges. NIH has already completed dozens of them. This builds on that success.

I envision that a panel would be established under this legislation to set benchmarks that would get us well along the road to conquering Alzheimer's. Successful, prize-worthy events would be measures such as identifying an Alzheimer's biomarker, developing early-detection techniques, or repurposing existing drugs for treatment. Milestones such as these would be established by a panel of experts. Think of what could be achieved if people with expertise combine their skills inside and outside the government to end Alzheimer's. Think of the progress that could be made toward ending human suffering.

My bill is S. 2067, the EUREKA Act, and it has received support from researchers, including the MIND Center at the University of Mississippi in my home State, where we are doing innovative, groundbreaking achievements every day on Alzheimer's. Other organizations supporting the EUREKA Act include the Alzheimer's Association, Us Against Alzheimer's, the XPRIZE Foundation, the Alzheimer's Foundation of America, BrightFocus Foundation, Leaders Engaged on Alzheimer's Disease, otherwise known as LEAD, and Eli Lilly. All of these organizations and companies are supporting EUREKA.

We already have not bipartisan cosponsorship but tripartisan cosponsorship of this legislation because we have Republicans, Democrats, and Independents already cosponsoring this EUREKA Act.

So I come to the floor today and ask my colleagues to talk to their health staff members.

Look at this concept. Talk to us about the efforts we are engaged in, about the research we have done, about the learned people who know what they are talking about and who have worked with us to bring this bill where it is. I hope we can create some momentum for this act soon. I hope we can attach it to legislation before the end of the year. I hope we can put this on the President's desk sometime early in the year 2016.

EUREKA can be a game changer in fighting one of the most terrible and horrible and expensive diseases we have. So I would urge my colleagues to look at this, to get back to me. I am going to aggressively be talking to each of my colleagues and asking them to cosponsor this legislation. I think we are onto something. I think we are getting very, very near to achieving this goal of conquering Alzheimer's within a decade.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source