[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 155 (Thursday, October 30, 2003)]
[House]
[Page H10134]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                     BREAST CANCER AWARENESS MONTH

  (Mr. BURGESS asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, as we come to the close of October, I 
wanted to remind Members that October is designated as Breast Cancer 
Awareness Month. Each year in the United States, breast cancer is 
diagnosed in more than 170,000 women. Several recent critical advances, 
sequencing of the human genome and the development of high throughput 
techniques for identifying DNA-sequence variants, have accelerated the 
pace of research aimed at preventing and curing breast cancer.
  Drugs such as Tamoxifen have helped to successfully treat thousands 
of women with breast cancer. Even more advanced, third-generation 
aromatase inhibitors are challenging Tamoxifen, the current gold 
standard of care, and providing more satisfying results in this field.
  Groundbreaking research is yielding important findings on reducing 
the recurrence of breast cancer in women who have previously been 
treated. This is all the more important, because with breast cancer, 
unlike other malignancies, the symptom-free intervals in some women may 
be decades.
  With these great advances in science and medicine, the medical 
community is more able to accurately diagnose and treat women with 
breast cancer. But with over 40,000 women who will die of this disease 
this year, our work is clearly not done. This month we are reminded of 
how far we have come, but how far we have to go in fighting in this 
deadly disease.

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