[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 16095]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               ACCELERATING THE END OF BREAST CANCER ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
West Virginia (Mrs. Capito) for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. Speaker, October is National Breast Cancer Awareness 
Month.
  It is estimated that almost 40,000 women in the United States will 
die of breast cancer this year. Those are mothers, sisters, 
grandmothers, wives, daughters. We will miss them, and it shouldn't be. 
Thousands of men will be diagnosed with breast cancer as well.
  Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths among 
women in the United States. Globally, breast cancer accounts for one-
quarter of all cancers suffered by women. Every family probably in this 
Chamber today and across America has been touched in its life by 
somebody who has had breast cancer, and I am certainly no exception. My 
mother-in-law, Ruth Eskew Capito, died tragically at age 51--diagnosed 
with breast cancer. I never knew her as a mother-in-law, and my 
children never got to enjoy the pleasures of having her as their 
grandmother. The emptiness and the hurt never go away.
  With the efforts of many dedicated to fighting breast cancer, we are 
making some progress--but limited progress--in stopping premature 
deaths caused by this terrible disease. In 1991, an average of 119 
women in the United States died of breast cancer each day. Today, more 
than 20 years later, an average of 108 women will die of the disease 
each day. So between the years of 2000 and 2009, the cancer mortality 
rate for women has declined by 1.9 percent annually.
  We must accelerate the progress we are making in finding new 
lifesaving treatments for breast cancer. That is why I, along with a 
bipartisan group of cosponsors, introduced H.R. 1830, the Accelerating 
the End of Breast Cancer Act. The Accelerating the End of Breast Cancer 
Act sets a national goal of ending deaths from the disease by 2020. 
This bill would establish a commission that would direct Federal and 
private sector resources towards the promising treatments aimed at 
stopping metastasis, or the spread of breast cancer, to other parts of 
the body.
  The legislation is not designed to spend more taxpayers' dollars. In 
fact, the bill does not authorize any new Federal spending. Instead, it 
is designed to direct our existing research dollars in the most 
efficient way possible. The Accelerating the End of Breast Cancer Act 
will not duplicate the efforts of existing government agencies and 
programs. It will, instead, provide a vital check and balance and will 
help ensure our limited research dollars are funding the most promising 
science in the area of breast cancer research. In working in this way 
and in building on the decades of Federal investment and achievement in 
breast cancer research, we can move forward to end breast cancer and 
learn how to prevent the disease within the next decade.
  So far, there are 172 House Members from both parties and all 
ideologies who have cosponsored this legislation. I invite my 
colleagues today, in this month of October--National Breast Cancer 
Awareness Month--who have not yet cosponsored, to join us in a 
cosponsorship. I look forward to working with Members on both sides of 
the aisle to spur the development of new lifesaving treatments for 
those with breast cancer. The hope to end breast cancer can become a 
reality. Let's join together to make that happen.

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