[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 70 (Wednesday, June 3, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E999-E1000]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  REGARDING THE INTRODUCTION OF THE MEDICAL INNOVATION TAX CREDIT BILL

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. SAM JOHNSON

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 3, 1998

  Mr. SAM JOHNSON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I include the ``Remarks of Dr. 
Leonard Zwelling from May 14, 1998'' for the Congressional Record.

Remarks of Dr. Leonard Zwelling, Associate Vice President for Research 
  Administration, the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center 
                           From May 14, 1998

       Congressman Johnson, Congressman Doggett and staff, I thank 
     you for the opportunity to speak today about the importance 
     of the Medical Innovation Tax Credit legislation (H.R. 3815 
     and S. 1885). I am Dr. Leonard Zwelling, Associate Vice 
     President for Research Administration at the University of 
     Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
       If you will excuse this transplanted New Yorker, I would 
     like to tell you a Texas story about medical innovation. This 
     is a story of persistence that illustrates the importance of 
     medical innovation and the potential impact of this tax 
     credit on the critical partnership between industry and 
     academic medical centers like M.D. Anderson. This is a story 
     about a woman who wanted to be a physician-investigator since 
     she was three. She would accompany her father, who was a 
     physician-investigator, to his laboratory and look into his 
     microscope. She succeeded in her goal. She went to medical 
     school and at graduation won all of the awards for research. 
     She followed her husband to the National Institutes of Health 
     where she began to investigate how white cells functioned, 
     eventually becoming interested in how they killed cancer 
     cells.
       She was attending the American Association for Cancer 
     Research meeting here in Washington in 1981 when she heard 
     Dr. Josh Fidler describe a mouse model of cancer and how he 
     was able to eradicate the cancer in the mice with a novel 
     agent he had developed. She looked at the model and 
     immediately saw that it resembled a form of bone cancer that 
     occurs in children called osteosarcoma. As she was a 
     Pediatrician, she saw the possibility that this new therapy 
     could benefit these children if it could be demonstrated to 
     be effective in people.
       She began to work with Dr. Fidler, moving from the NIH in 
     Bethesda to the new government facility in Frederick. Despite 
     having had a new baby and despite the longer commute, the 
     work was gratifying. She was able to reproduce Dr. Fidler's 
     mouse findings

[[Page E1000]]

     using human cells. Then, a problem arose. When it was time to 
     do the human testing, the leadership of the National Cancer 
     Institute in Bethesda would not let this experienced 
     physician, a board-certified Pediatrician, do the trials 
     because she was not a trained cancer doctor.
       Then fate smiled on the woman. Dr. Fidler was asked to lead 
     a new department of Cell Biology at M.D. Anderson in Houston. 
     He asked her to join his department and start the trials in 
     Texas with help from a pharmaceutical sponsor. This time her 
     husband followed her.
       With a tremendous amount of effort, but strong 
     encouragement from the faculty and staff at M.D. Anderson, 
     this research physician began to test the new drug in Texas 
     in patients with osteosarcoma who had not responded to 
     chemotherapy. It worked! The drug activated normal white 
     cells to kill tumor cells. Today, the final stages of testing 
     have been completed in a nation-wide trial. The effectiveness 
     of the drug will be known shortly. However, the drug was 
     always in short supply. The company who made it barely gave 
     the doctor enough to treat these patients. This was because 
     osteosarcoma is a relatively rare form of cancer. Only 2000 
     new diagnoses were made each year in the United States. This 
     is small when compared with the tens of thousands of patients 
     with breast or lung cancer. A tax credit, such as that 
     proposed by Congressman Johnson, might have provided the 
     incentive to continue the work in this rarer malignancy and 
     stimulated new investigations in patients with other forms of 
     cancer.
       Pediatric cancers are, thank goodness, rare. But that makes 
     them an unattractive target for large-scale drug development. 
     A tax credit such as this one, might be the very incentive 
     needed to produce more investment in the treatment and 
     eventual cure of patients with uncommon diseases. This would 
     undoubtedly lead to treatments for the more common cancers as 
     well.
       This is a story I know well, for the woman I describe is 
     Dr. Eugenie Kleinerman of M.D. Anderson who happens to be my 
     wife. We are both very grateful for the wonderful opportunity 
     of working these fourteen years at M.D. Anderson in the great 
     state of Texas. But it shouldn't take 14 years to develop a 
     new treatment for cancer. Perhaps, if this bill is passed, 
     more people can be helped and helped faster by doctors like 
     Dr. Kleinerman with the help of corporate sponsors.
       Thank you Congressmen, and I will be happy to answer any of 
     your questions.

     

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