[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 134 (Thursday, September 18, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5852-S5853]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      TRIBUTE TO DR. STORY LANDIS

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, today I want to recognize a truly 
exceptional public servant, Dr. Story Landis, who is retiring in a few 
weeks from the directorship of the National Institute of Neurological 
Disorders and Stroke at the National Institutes of Health. I have been 
fortunate to get to know Dr. Landis during her 11 years as Institute 
Director. She has testified several times before the committees I 
chair, the Senate Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations 
Subcommittee and the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions 
Committee, always with the poise of a leader at a prestigious national 
institution, the rigor of a renowned scientist, and the insight of a 
truly extraordinary pioneer working on the frontiers of our knowledge 
of the human brain.
  Certainly, Dr. Landis has an exemplary pedigree. A graduate of 
Wellesley College and Harvard University, Dr. Landis came to NIH in 
1995 as NINDS Scientific Director, following a distinguished career as 
a neuroscience researcher and chair of the Neuroscience Department at 
Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. As scientific 
director, she had the bold vision to stimulate collaborations in brain 
research across labs from different institutes on the NIH campus and 
led the planning for a unique national neuroscience research center at 
NIH. From the time Dr. Landis became NINDS Director in 2003, she worked 
with me, with the late Senator Spector, and with other NIH Institute 
Directors to make this center a reality. This spring I was fortunate to 
be at the NIH campus to help officially dedicate the John Edward Porter 
Neuroscience Research Center.
  I will remember Dr. Landis best for her courage, her ability to 
bridge gaps, and her passion.
  First, her courage. Not many people remember this, but in 2007, Dr. 
Landis was the first NIH Director to speak publicly in opposition to 
President Bush's ban on Federal funding of stem cell research. That may 
not sound like much to us now, but at the time it was a remarkable act 
of professional integrity and personal courage. The American public was 
very divided, the scientific community was not unified, and most 
importantly, she worked for the administration whose policies she was 
publicly criticizing. She risked her job and her reputation to alert 
this Senate to the reality that research was being stifled--research 
with enormous potential to reduce human suffering. Just last week, I 
read a press report about stem cells being used to decode schizophrenic 
brains. This Nation is indebted to Dr. Landis for having the courage to 
speak a hard truth at a critical juncture in our Nation's scientific 
policy debate.
  Second, let me talk about Dr. Landis's ability to bridge gaps. In 
truth, she has bridged so many divides throughout her career: She 
reached across institutes in 2005 to establish and develop one of the 
most effective trans-NIH initiatives in producing the NIH Blueprint for 
Neuroscience Research and more recently launching the NIH BRAIN 
Initiative, which will bring together engineers, aging experts, and 
neuroscientists to transform our understanding of the human brain. She 
reached across scientific gaps in chairing the NIH Stem Cell Task Force 
and helping to coordinate and lead pain research efforts across NIH, 
and she bridged generation gaps in her enthusiastic mentorship, her 
work on career development, and her support for early-stage 
investigators.
  But the gap I remember best is the divide between scientists and 
policymakers. I might be telling tales out of school here, but it was 
Story Landis and Jim Battey who sat with me for

[[Page S5853]]

nearly an hour in Dirksen 116 and patiently walked me through the 
science and the potential for stem cell research. Concepts that are 
familiar to many of us now--ideas such as pluripotency and somatic cell 
transfer--were entirely new. Scientists and the public would all have 
to learn how to engage with one another about the legal, technical, and 
ethical issues raised by stem cell research, and Dr. Landis was there 
to bridge that divide with me.
  Finally, let me speak about her passion. Dr. Landis and I have worked 
together for many years on many topics, but none is closer to her heart 
than spinal muscular atrophy, or SMA. When she and I began 
collaborating to address SMA, there was very little to offer families 
who had a child afflicted by this debilitating disease. Between 2003 
and 2012, the NINDS piloted the Spinal Muscular Atrophy Project to 
expedite therapeutics development. If you listen to Dr. Collins talk 
about the Advanced Medicine Partnership today, you hear echoes of Dr. 
Landis's work on SMA. The project was designed to accelerate the 
research process by creating a virtual pharmaceutical company to 
identify drugs that could be used as potential leads for clinical 
testing. This was groundbreaking work well before ``translational 
research'' was commonly discussed. And it worked not just for the 
compounds it discovered but also by getting companies interested in 
creating more and better treatments. As a consequence, today when we 
talk about the SMA treatments in development, we talk about treatments 
in the plural. This would not be happening if Story Landis had not 
focused her passion on SMA.
  Dr. Landis's career has stimulated tremendous progress in the field 
of neuroscience and inspired legions of young scientists to follow in 
her path. She has been a true public servant. Indeed, I am always 
amazed at America's good fortune in attracting public servants of the 
world-class caliber of Dr. Landis. It has been my privilege to work 
with her and to learn from her over the years. Dr. Landis has many 
other admirers in the U.S. Senate. We honor Dr. Story Landis today for 
her invaluable leadership of NINDS and for her great service to the 
people of the United States.

                          ____________________