WASHINGTON, DC June 16, 2015 Rising college junior Ian Lock from Fond du lac, Wis., is in Washington, D.C., today to urge Members of Congress to support a proposed $2B in mandatory funding a year for each of the next 5 years for medical research at the National Institutes of Health. The funding is included in the 21st Century Cures Act.
At the day on Capitol Hill, Lock joins other patients who have directly benefitted from past investment in medical research as well as House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI), Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), Health Subcommittee Chairman Joe Pitts (R-PA), Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), and Health Subcommittee Ranking Member Gene Green (D-TX), who have been instrumental in drafting the potentially lifesaving legislation.
Lock was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer, osteosarcoma, in his sophomore year of high school after he went to the doctor for a football injury.æ If diagnosed just a year earlier, he would have lost his leg, but due to cutting edge research doctors were able to save it using a cadaver bone. After 19 rounds of chemotherapy, he was cancer-free and was able to return to his active life as a high school student returning to the baseball diamond, swim team and even being named prom king. Since then, Lock has worked to advocate for increased cancer research funding at the National Cancer Institute by sharing his inspiring story.
While we still do not know what exactly caused my cancer, what I do know is if the National Institutes of Health hadn 't funded the cancer research that lead to new treatments for this disease I could have lost my leg, and even my life, Lock said.
Following high school, Lock enrolled at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minn., where he is a rising junior, studying public health with plans to earn his PhD and become a cancer researcher. This summer he is at the University of Minnesota working as a research intern with a pediatric oncology team that is examining biomarkers that could help to identify those that are at higher risk for developing osteosarcoma.
Ian 's story is inspiring and beautifully illustrates the tremendous value of investment in cancer research, said Christopher Hansen, President of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN). If we make funding for cancer research a national priority, we have the potential to not only eliminate death and suffering from this disease, but to improve the quality of survivorship as well.
Over the past decade, funding for cancer research has not kept up with the pace of scientific progress. When accounting for inflation, the NIH budget has shrunk by more than 22 percent since FY 2003. At the same time, researchers have begun developing targeted therapies and immunotherapies for some of the deadliest forms of cancer, ushering in a new era of precision medicine.
Through investment in basic research, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Cancer Institute (NCI) have played a role in virtually every major advance in the fight against cancer. The federal government is the largest public funder of medical research and continues to play a tremendous role in our ability as a nation to eradicate this disease.
We need to do everything we can to continue this momentum and that means more support for the research that 's happening with NIH support in laboratories in every part of this nation, Hansen said.
In the United States, one in two men and one in three women will receive a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime. This year alone, an estimated 1.7 million Americans will be diagnosed with cancer, and more than 589,000 people in the U.S. are expected to die from the disease.
ACS CAN is mobilizing hundreds of thousands of volunteers across the country to urge their lawmakers to support the critical funding for medical research that is included in the 21st Century Cures Act.
ACS CAN, the nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy affiliate of the American Cancer Society, supports evidence-based policy and legislative solutions designed to eliminate cancer as a major health problem. ACS CAN works to encourage elected officials and candidates to make cancer a top national priority. ACS CAN gives ordinary people extraordinary power to fight cancer with the training and tools they need to make their voices heard. For more information, visit www.fightcancer.org.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Alissa Crispino or Steven Weiss
American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network
Phone: 202-661-5772 or 202-661-5711
E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]
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