Funding Alzheimer's Research

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, ``Alzheimer's,'' a word that brings fear and trauma to families all across America and, indeed, around the world. Tonight we are going to spend our time talking about this dreaded disease for which there is no known cure and which always ends in death.

I would like now to turn to my colleague, this being a bipartisan Special Order hour, unusual to be sure, but absolutely appropriate given the fact that this illness affects virtually every American family. I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte).

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank the gentleman from Virginia for joining us and for his commitment to this very serious issue. There are approximately 5.1 million Americans who have Alzheimer's today, and it is expected to substantially grow. As the baby boomers come into their latter years, we would expect to see as many as 13 million Americans with this disease in the years ahead. It will be an incredible challenge for this Nation.

I now yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Higgins) for him to join us and share his thoughts on this issue.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Higgins, thank you for sharing your thoughts on this dreaded disease for which there is no known cure and there is no way to diagnose it until it is present. You cannot get ahead of this illness, but there are ways we can make progress. You pointed out what has happened over the last decade with extraordinary research efforts, and this chart really lays it out there as to where we are.

For breast cancer, we have seen a decline of 2 percent in breast cancer deaths; prostate cancer, an 8 percent decline; heart disease, a 16 percent decline; stroke, 23 percent decline; and then one of the great victories, HIV/AIDS, a 42 percent decline in the number of deaths. This is the result of research, an extraordinary amount of research going on, not only in the United States but around the world, resulting in significant drops in the death rates for those diseases.

On the other hand, Alzheimer's, where we have just over $500 million of research, we have seen a 68 percent increase in the death rates. This is the story of Alzheimer's. This is the challenge that we face. This is the challenge that every American family faces and our communities. We will talk more about this a little later.

The cochair of the Alzheimer's Task Force here in the Congress of the United States is the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Maxine Waters), who has joined us this evening to talk about the work that the task force is doing and her own commitment to this profoundly important issue. Maxine and I have had the pleasure of working together for 40 years, so it is all good.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. GARAMENDI. Congresswoman Waters, thank you so very, very much for your leadership as cochair of the Alzheimer's task force here in Congress. Obviously, it is leading to some good pieces of legislation. Last year, when you introduced that legislation, I had the privilege and pleasure of being a coauthor. I will join you again as you introduce those pieces of legislation. I bet we can get all 194 members of the task force on board. That will give us--let's see, we need 18 plus 6--24 more Members and we can get it past the House of Representatives.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. GARAMENDI. Let's do it. Yes, we can. Si, se puede.

Thank you very much. I really appreciate your leadership on this. I know this is a personal issue for you with family having been impacted by it.

I want to just take a few moments--and I know you are going to have to take off and head to another meeting--but Alzheimer's is very, very much a personal thing.

This is my wife, Patti, with her mother as her mother was entering the last year of her 15-year struggle with Alzheimer's. We had the good fortune of Patti's mom, Merle, living with us in our home, and we were able to take care of her. We had a daycare come in to handle the issues during the day. But then in the evening, Patti and I took care of her. It turned out to be a good experience for us where the family really pulled together, the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren all coming together.

I think our situation was, perhaps, unusual in that my mother-in-law was always kind, always gentle, even though in the last couple of years she could not speak and was unable to really move very much. But, nonetheless, it was a period of time where the grandchildren came to know her in a very different way.

I remember one incident that took place about a year, maybe 14 months before she died. Her speech was garbled and not really clear. We couldn't understand. But our little 3-year-old granddaughter climbed up on great-grandma's bed and was listening to the great-grandmother talk. The rest of us adults were gathered around and we were talking about whatever it was, and our little 3-year old began to translate what great-grandma was saying. We were suddenly caught up in the awareness that, while the mind was not functioning fully, it was, nonetheless, functioning in a way in which this woman, who was then 90 years old, was able to understand what we were saying, but because of this disease was unable to articulate, at least to us, her involvement in the conversation.

It was one of those moments when we realized that this illness destroys the mind a piece at a time. It doesn't just wipe out, as a stroke might, but it takes away the cognitive ability of the mind in a slow progression through time. This progression was about 15 years, but other progressions might be very, very rapid.

I know earlier today our colleague from Missouri, Vicky Hartzler, had intended to join us, but was called away late this evening. Her mother died just 3 weeks ago of this illness. She explained some of the way in which it happened. When we come back in about a month to do another Special Order hour, I will ask her to join us and, hopefully, she will be able to share her experiences.

But I suspect among the 435 of us here there are, perhaps, more than 50 percent of us whose families have been personally impacted, and then the neighbors, as Mr. Goodlatte was sharing with us.

If you would like to join in, let's have a colloquy. We will share thoughts about what we can do about the research effort. I will put up some charts and we can chat on for a few minutes.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. GARAMENDI. Let me just pick up this chart. You mentioned research in your opening remarks, and then again. Your leadership on this has been absolutely extraordinary--the bills that you have introduced and the encouragement you have given to others to introduce legislation and push it forward.

I think this is where we are going to spend our time--fighting for research. I am going to go through this.

Ms. Waters, I know you must leave. Thank you so very much for joining us.

This poster shows how we are spending our National Institutes of Health research dollars. We can be thankful for each piece of this research that is going on.

First, on the cancer research ongoing with considerable success--and I will come back and show an earlier poster that I had--we are spending $5.418 billion. This is in fiscal year 2014--$5.418 billion.

What does that result in? Well, over the years, between 2000 and 2010, we have seen breast cancer deaths decline by 2 percent, prostate cancer decline by 8 percent. That is what research will do. It is successful.

With HIV/AIDS, just under $3 billion spent annually in 2014, and again we are seeing HIV/AIDS an incredible success story. Still with us, but nonetheless, we have seen death from HIV/AIDS decline by 42 percent as we have invested $3 billion over the years; in 2014, $3 billion, and a little less in the previous years.

Similarly, cardiovascular illnesses--heart disease, stroke, and heart attacks--we are spending around $2 billion of your taxpayer money on this particular disease. What is the result? The result is that deaths from heart disease from 2000-2010, deaths from heart disease are down by 16 percent and stroke down by 23 percent.

What does this mean? This means that research really works.

Where are we with Alzheimer's research? Alzheimer's research in 2014 was $566 million, just over half a billion dollars for Alzheimer's research. And where are we with Alzheimer's? Well, that same period of time, we have seen Alzheimer's deaths increase by 68 percent, in part because there is no cure except death, and that is what has happened. As the baby boomers age, as that cohort of the population moves through into advanced age, Alzheimer's is taking a grip on those people.

So this is the story. Our goal this year, along with the research that Ms. Waters has already discussed, and some other bills that will be discussed in the days ahead, our goal this year is to ramp up this research. A project, as a result of the legislation that was passed in the year 2011, gave us information from the National Institutes of Health and other scientists that the appropriate level of funding to understand Alzheimer's, to find a cure or at least a way of prolonging health and delaying the onset of the illness, should be about $2 billion a year, something similar to what we are spending on cardiovascular research.

Fortunately, in last year's budget--that is the 2015 budget, that is the current budget--we increased the funding by about $25 million. Good. We are not getting very close to $2 billion, which is the goal to really get and understand this disease. But, nonetheless, we put $25 million more into it last year.

I hope that all of us who are concerned about this make a full-court press this year to try to get that number up to a much more substantial number so that we can really get at this research. The President, recognizing this problem--as was discussed earlier by one of our colleagues here--the President has proposed an additional $50 million. Good. But, once again, not what the scientists tell us we need to really adequately fund this illness. So we are going to work on this.

I notice that my colleague from California--would you like to join us? This is a bipartisan Special Order hour. Unusual, to be sure. Usually, we talk both sides--one side talks about the other side, the other side talks about them. This time we are talking about a common problem that affects all of us--Democrat, Republican, Independent, left, right, center, up, and down--all Americans.

My colleague from California, welcome.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you, Mr. Rohrabacher.

I know in your district--in the Orange County area--there is major medical research going on at the University of California at Irvine and, certainly, at UCLA, at the mind institutes there. Out of that research do come new technologies, new drugs, new kinds of equipment, some of which are patentable; and the licensing of the new drugs through the FDA is always a challenge, so we do have multiple tasks here. We have to deal with the patent laws and the availability of patent research dollars and then have to make sure that the drug actually is made available to address the illness. I thank you so very much for joining us.

Mr. Speaker, I want to go back to a couple of things that we were talking about earlier on the research side. Our goal is to ramp up this research to try to get to the level that is suggested. Now, we always look at cost benefit. Is this research going to pay off? I think it will.

As I was preparing for this evening, I came across an email, actually, from the University of California at Davis, which I represent--near Sacramento--at their California National Primate Research Center. They have been using stem cell research to address the issue of Alzheimer's. What they have found is that they are able to use this Nouvelle stem cell therapy in primates, which is similar to the human brain, and to actually have some success. They have now taken it the next step further. Here is where we are into the FDA and the approval of drugs, Mr. Rohrabacher. They have taken it the next step further, and they are doing clinical human trials with this drug, and it seems to restore the human brain.

Now, that is a long way before we get to the end of this story, but this is what happens when we have research developing a new therapy--in this case, a stem cell therapy with primates--and now transferring it over to the human in a clinical trial. How exciting it is--the possibilities--not just in slowing down the progress of the disease, which has been the short-term goal, but maybe in being able to restore the human brain. Wow. Wow. I think of my mother-in-law. I think of those whom I know who have come down with this illness, and I am going, wow, what if? What if it had been available? Well, it could be.

I know, Mr. Rohrabacher, you are very interested in international work. You have traveled extensively. You are involved with other countries and their research. This is not just a United States issue; this is an international issue.

Earlier last year, in June, the new cochair of the Alzheimer's Task Force here in Washington, in the House of Representatives, conducted a bipartisan international conference in New York at the United Nations, pulling together researchers from around the world. We have another piece of this puzzle available to us in the United States--international research, NIH research, research at the universities, at the various mind institutes around the Nation--all of that.

As a result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with improvised explosive devices and the extraordinary impact that those have had on our military--the soldiers, the marines, and others who have suffered from those explosions--we are now, in the military budget, appropriating a significant amount of money for research into traumatic brain injury as well as into posttraumatic stress syndrome, trying to understand the human mind. What happens when you get that blow against the head? What causes the brain to react and to deteriorate? That research also informs us about Alzheimer's.

One of the goals that I will be pursuing this year is to try to bring together all of these research programs that are underway. Even the National Football League is engaging in research having to do with traumatic brain injury to the football players in the professional football leagues. They are trying to understand what it is all about. So, if we could pull together all of that research and pool the information and make it available--perhaps what is going on at UC Davis and at other research institutions--I think we can jump-start the solution.

Fortunately, I won't be doing this alone. Our former colleague here, Patrick Kennedy, heads up an organization called the One Mind organization, and that is their goal: to pull together the research--to get all of the international, the military, the National Institutes of Health, the National Football League--and to have all of us working towards a common goal of understanding the human mind, what the injuries are, and how we can deal with Alzheimer's as a result of all of that.

I am going to put up a couple more pieces of this puzzle and the trauma that it brings. We discussed this briefly early on, and I just want to come back to this.

The already high cost of Alzheimer's will skyrocket as the baby boomers age. This is driven by three things: one, the cost of treating Alzheimer's, which is very expensive and is ongoing; secondly, there is no known cure; and, thirdly, the demographic growth of the population. Today, you are looking at somewhere around $225 billion spent by the government and private and individuals and families on Alzheimer's, and it is expected to grow to close to $1 trillion by 2050. This is an extraordinary growth rate. A lot of this money is going to be taxpayer money spent on Medicare and Medicaid.

This one shows the cost increases to Medicare and Medicaid. In 2010, Medicare and Medicaid were spending about $122 billion. In 2020, it is expected to go up to nearly $200 billion and then just continue to escalate.

This, many think, is the way in which Medicare and Medicaid will be bankrupted--just with Alzheimer's alone. Now, this is the government spending. The private spending--private insurance and families--will probably be spending somewhere around a third of this amount in the years ahead. So, if we are able--and we believe we can. Just take one look at what is going on at UC Davis, and that is just one of dozens and dozens of examples.

What is happening is that the research is coming on. The first goal is to delay the onset. It is anticipated that, if we were able to quickly ramp up to $2 billion a year of research, we would, within the next 4 to 5 years, be able to find a way, perhaps with a drug therapy, to delay the onset of Alzheimer's by 5 years. What does that mean? That means that the $2 billion that is spent on research leading to the delay--not the cure but just the delay of the onset--would, in the next 3 years, after that delay goes into place, save the taxpayers the $2 billion that was spent on research, and then those savings would continue on into the future. If you are a financial analyst on Wall Street and if you are able to get a payback within 3 years, you are thinking that that is a pretty good investment. So we ought to look at this in terms of cost benefit, in terms of investment--the financial side of it. That is appropriate.

Yet, on the human side, think what could be done. Think what could be done to those families, to my wife's mother--my mother-in-law--if her illness were delayed 5 years. She would have had 5 more years of healthy life. She didn't die of heart disease or cancer. She died of Alzheimer's. She could have had an additional 5 years if we had been able, at that moment, to have delayed the onset of the disease. As we understand how to delay the onset, we will also learn how to cure the disease. This is where we are headed. This is our goal. This is what we want to try to accomplish.

I am going to put this one up because it is so dramatic. Here is the cost of treatment today for the Federal Government. This is 2014: $150 billion from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. CMS: $150 billion. These are actually 2012 expenditures. Then this is where we are spending the money: $560 million on research. It is lopsided.

My final point before I turn back my time today is to take these two charts, actually. This one: Research works. Research saves lives. Research improves the quality of life for Americans.

Cancer research: we have decreased the cancer rate for breast cancer. Cancer research: we have decreased by 8 percent prostate cancer. HIV/AIDS research: a 42 percent decrease in the death rate. Heart disease and stroke: 23 and 16 percent. Alzheimer's: we are not there yet. We are researching, but we are not there yet, so we wind up with a death rate that is rapidly increasing.

Ultimately, it is about this: it is about my family, and it is about your family. It is about the American families. It is about the American families who are enduring their loved ones--their parents, their grandparents--slowly, slowly dying of Alzheimer's, losing their mental capabilities. It affected our family, and I suspect it has affected your family. It doesn't have to be. We can deal with this. Yes, we can--si, se puede. We can do this, and your Congress--Democrat and Republican--is working on this issue. We are going to beat Alzheimer's. It is our task. It is our challenge.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source