Breast Cancer Research

BREAST CANCER RESEARCH

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the tradition of line-item funding for cancer research programs in the Department of Defense, DOD, appropriations bill. This practice has been abandoned in the fiscal year 2005 legislation before us now, and I fear that this could do great damage to the advances in cancer treatment that our scientists are working so hard to achieve every day.

The DOD Peer-Reviewed Research Programs provide funding for critical, life-saving research on breast cancer, prostate cancer, and ovarian cancer. Each of these is a devastating illness that challenges hundreds of thousands of new patients and their families every year. The Peer-Reviewed Research Programs are essential to bringing these families hope and new opportunities in cancer treatments.

The prostate cancer research program uses an innovative grants structure that brings scientists and consumers together to make key policy decisions about prostate cancer research. Since its inception 8 years ago, this far-reaching, influential program has literally changed the way prostate cancer research is done. It has become a model that other research programs have sought to replicate.

In recent years, the DOD breast cancer program funded groundbreaking research, such as the discovery of the drug Herceptin, which prolongs the lives of women with a particularly aggressive type of advanced breast cancer. This drug could not have been developed without research that was funded in part by the DOD breast cancer research program.

Like its counterparts for prostate cancer and breast cancer, the Ovarian Cancer Research Project fosters collaborative efforts and long-term institutional commitments to ovarian cancer research focusing on prevention and early detection, which are key to the development of a sustained commitment to ovarian cancer research.

Not only am I deeply disturbed by the cuts to these programs in the Senate bill, but it is my belief that given the Department of Defense's proven track record in conducting effective, efficient research to combat cancers and find new cures, the Department's efforts should instead be expanded to include desperately-needed research on other forms of the disease, including kidney cancer.

For a disease that has received very little research funding to date, kidney cancer affects a surprisingly large number of people. In 2003, 36,000 new cases were diagnosed, an increase of 12 percent over the previous year, while more than 12,000 individuals died of the disease. Supplementing current kidney cancer research funding with additional money from the Department of Defense would be a significant step toward providing meaningful treatments for kidney cancer patients.

My colleagues on both sides of the aisle have shown broad support for these programs in the past, urging the Senate to continue its support of each individual program. Many of us signed letters requesting that each program continue to receive at least the same amount of funding it received last year, which would have been consistent with the bill passed earlier this week by the House of Representatives.

The House language is not ideal. It funds each of the three Peer-Reviewed Research Programs at last year's levels, ignoring inflation and the increased cost of research. However, the House provision is far superior to a Senate version that forces cancer research programs to compete for a decreased amount of funding.

As the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2005 goes to conference, I urge my colleagues to support the language passed in the House and preserve the integrity of each of these critical Peer-Reviewed Research Programs.