Rebuild America Jobs Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Tennessee, Mr. Corker, for very graciously beginning this discussion. I want to join in thanking the distinguished Senator from Delaware for all of his hard work and his very successful and insightful discussion this morning. It is a problem that concerns all of us very deeply and immediately, and his leadership has been an enormous contribution to the Nation on this issue.

THE GAIN ACT

I am pleased to be here today with Senator Corker to discuss a problem that is spreading across the country. It is a public health threat to our troops, our children, our frail, and our elderly involving the spread of mutant germs, so-called superbugs, that are resistant, sometimes even immune to existing antibiotics.

I have been very proud of the work Senator Corker and I have done together. He has joined me, and we have been joined by Senators Bennet, Hatch, Casey, Alexander, Coons, and Roberts in the Senate, and by Representatives Gingrey and DeGette in the House, along with a very bipartisan group of respected Members there on an issue that is truly bipartisan. I wish to yield to Senator Corker and then continue my remarks on an issue that ought to concern us very closely and immediately.

Reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that these infections are not only prevalent but spreading across the country. I have a detailed set of charts that demonstrate this problem. He and I have developed what I think is a solution the Congress can consider in order to provide incentives for development of new antibiotics, new medicine, that can help the Nation prevent the spread of these kinds of diseases.

So with that, I yield for the distinguished Senator from Tennessee.

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Again, my thanks to my very distinguished colleague from Tennessee whose leadership and contribution to this bill has been instrumental from the very start. I welcome him and have been thankful for his partnership on this issue.

As my colleague from Tennessee said so well, these antibiotic-resistant drugs are a spreading scourge. Reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that MRSA infections are responsible for more than 17,000 deaths in the United States every year--more than AIDS and many other diseases that are regarded as public health threats. All 50 States have seen rates of antibiotic-resistant E. coli infections double in less than 10 years.

A lesser known bug, Acintobacter, a bacteria that affects increasing numbers of our troops serving in Iraq, has infected more than 700 of our servicemembers since 2003. The numbers are continuing to rise. Those numbers are alarming. I have some charts I will show in just a moment that will be even more graphic. But to put a human face on this problem, Jamel Sawyer, a former college football player from Norwalk, CT, knows all too well the crippling impact of these antibiotic-resistant infections.

He was in school in Boston. He suffered from severe back pain and a rising temperature. He went to the hospital and was told he was suffering from a kind of antibiotic-resistant staph infection which surmounted multiple rounds of antibiotic treatment. He was left paralyzed and unable to walk. He was paralyzed from the waist down and remains very severely handicapped as a result. Right now he is fighting to gain back his ability to walk and function normally.

We are in an arms race with superbugs. We are in a fight with antibiotic-resistant mutating germs that are a spreading, persistent, and pernicious problem all around the country. The resistance is fueled by careless use of antibiotics, the overuse of certain kinds of antibiotics, or failure to use them properly, as when they are not used for the full round when they should be and thereby lead to greater resistance on the part of these germs.

Failure to use these antibiotics properly and failure to exercise good stewardship is important, but it is not the only cause. We need to stay ahead of these germs in an arms race to develop new antibiotics and provide incentives for those antibiotics.

The problems we are encountering are shown by these charts, beginning first in the year 2000 with antibiotic-resistant E. coli. As this chart makes clear, nowhere--in no State in the United States--was there a rate above 10 percent. That accounts for the light yellow pattern here.

In 2009, the situation was very different. In States across the country--major States, including New York and the entire East--the rate was above 35 percent. In many parts of the Midwest, including the Presiding Officer's State, the rate was above 25 percent. E. coli resistance to treatment by this commonly used antibiotic presents a threat particularly to our children and our elderly.

The next chart I wish to show concerns Acintobacter. This bacteria has afflicted particularly our troops coming back from Iraq. It is, in fact, nicknamed ``Iraqtobacter'' by many military doctors, and it has literally jumped enormously in the number of cases.

This was the case in the year 2000, showing almost everywhere rates below 5 percent. The present incidence is very different, alarmingly so. In some States it is above 50 percent, including, I believe, New Mexico, and in many parts of the East above 30 to 40 percent.

This Acintobacter incidence is something that is a major national security problem insofar as 700 troops have been infected with Acintobacter, and as Robert Jackson, the director of Military Families United said so eloquently about this disease:

The worst part is that many of our men and women in uniform survive the war effort only to return and die of this infection in the continental United States. Thus Military Families United strongly supports the GAIN Act, which would ensure that American companies have the motivation to combat the most modern, multi-drug resistant diseases.

I brought these charts simply to show how the spread of these superbug infections has affected the entire United States. There are other diseases like MRSA and VRSA. They are a set of acronyms that are comparable to, in effect, a modern plague.

Fully one-third of all deaths from H1N1 Swine Flu, for example, in 2009 were actually caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. According to the Infectious Disease Society of America, 100,000 deaths and 360,000 hospitalizations in the United States resulted from antibiotic-resistant infections, at a cost of $26 billion to our health system annually.

What is the reason for the rise and spread of these diseases? Well, the main reason is we do not have new antibiotics to treat and cure them. The reason for that dearth of new antibiotics goes to the fundamentals of modern economics involving the drug industry. Antibiotics are prescribed and used for a course of 2 weeks, if they work. There are blockbuster drugs and miracle drugs that are used for the treatment of chronic diseases and, therefore, are used often for lifetimes. The revenues from those blockbuster drugs are themselves blockbuster products and profits.

The problem with antibiotics is the lack of economic incentive to develop them in the modern economics of the pharmaceutical industry. The GAIN Act would remedy that problem. It would incentivize the development and research required to implement and discover these new drugs. It would extend the data exclusivity rights for 5 years. It would speed and expedite consideration of these drugs by the FDA. It would provide a fast track, essentially, and enable prompt review. It would moderate and eliminate the kinds of regulatory hurdles which is so important in providing not only incentives but also a track to consumers so they would have the availability of these drugs.

I personally would welcome other ideas if there are any for strengthening the incentives for development of these antibiotics that are so important to treat and cure the antibiotic-resistant germs that cause these problems. I hope we will continue to have the kind of bipartisan momentum in favor of these new developments.

I close by saying we are all talking about jobs on the floor of the Senate these days. This proposal is also, in a way, a jobs-related program. It would enable small innovators and small businesses--one is, for example, Rib-X Pharmaceuticals in New Haven, a 50-person company trying to develop new drugs through innovation. The kind of boost and incentive this bill will provide is very important for the innovators of America who are out there trying to provide cures for Acintobacter, MRSA, E. coli--all of them superbugs--providing a solution to this problem that I think is very much urgent and in the interests of our Nation.

This measure is a first step. I hope we can come together to enact it. I urge the Senate to join me in doing so.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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