During Wednesday’s Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) raised concerns over funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health.
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00:00Senator Van Hollen.
00:02Thank you, Madam Chair.
00:04And if I could ask at the beginning that six statements from well-respected organizations expressing their support for NIH be submitted for the record.
00:12Without objection.
00:14Thank you, Senator.
00:16And I want to thank Chair Collins and Senator Murray and especially all of you, the witnesses, for your powerful testimony today.
00:25I've been listening on C-SPAN and I just want to thank all of you for being witnesses as to why the work done at NIH and FDA and other places is so important to kids like Charlie and to our country.
00:44And I am proud that my state of Maryland is the home to NIH and FDA, but I'm especially proud of the work they do on behalf of Americans and American families every day.
00:57And what we have witnessed in this first hundred days of the Trump administration is a direct attack on NIH and medical research.
01:08And what that means, and you've all boiled it down, is that puts more Americans in harm's way.
01:16It means less research into life-saving treatments, life-saving cures and treatments.
01:25And, of course, at the global level, it simply opens the door to our adversaries like China, who has been working very hard to sort of emulate the American model.
01:39So whether it's a threat to U.S. innovation in the area of medical innovation, or whether it's the direct harm done to American families.
01:52What we're, what we've been witnessing is a danger to all of us.
02:00Ms. Stenson, I'm glad to hear that your daughter, Charlie, very cute, is cancer-free and that she's back enjoying the simple joys of being a kid.
02:13Earlier today, you did talk about how these moments are not guaranteed for many families impacted by pediatric cancer diagnoses.
02:21But they are made possible by life-saving research.
02:25Congress and this committee has invested in it in the past.
02:29So as someone whose family has been so personally impacted, as well as your support for others who are battling pediatric cancer,
02:37can you talk about what progress in medical research and access to clinical trials has meant to you and other families?
02:50Thank you for the question and for your kind words about Charlie.
02:54Access to clinical trials is huge in our community.
02:57Many families move state lines just to receive treatment and to save their children.
03:03And rolling back access is, it would be devastating and we simply can't do it.
03:10We need to be expanding access and increasing cures for our children.
03:15There's far too many families who do not realize a cure.
03:18And it's never lost on me that we got to because of NIH funding and clinical trials.
03:24But there's so much more needed.
03:28Thank you for, again, bearing personal witness to the great benefits of medical research
03:37and also the dangers of cutting this area in this area.
03:40Dr. Schlechtman, I was heartening to see the photo you held up as a reminder of the importance of this work.
03:50And, you know, like others on the committee, I'm very worried about how we are going to completely disincentivize younger researchers
04:01from engaging in this life-saving activity and the impact, of course, that we're talking about on clinical trials.
04:10So can you also speak broadly to the dangers that we will all face if we continue to cut back in these areas
04:21and discourage young researchers from entering this important field?
04:26Yes, thank you for that question.
04:28I think, you know, we've touched on some of that today.
04:31But to crystallize that, you know, clinical trials and running clinical trials is challenging for the researchers that do it.
04:42There's an awful lot of regulatory and administrative activities that go into that.
04:47And I would say that they do it primarily driven by their love and their passion for being able to provide their patients
04:57who otherwise may have untreatable cancers with a possible cure.
05:03And again, 30 years ago when we put patients on cancer trials, there really was no kind of upfront feeling that the patient themselves would benefit from that.
05:15They were doing it to help us learn about treatments of the future.
05:19But as I said in my presentation, there are thousands and thousands of patients of people walking around today alive because they had a good outcome from a treatment that they got on a trial.
05:33And so the medical professionals at my cancer center and the others are committed to doing that.
05:41But there's a certain limit to that commitment.
05:43If the challenges are made insurmountable, they won't be able to do it.
05:49If money is removed that supports the services that helped them open the trial now make it much more difficult for them to open the trial,
05:59eventually they'll say, well, I have to take care of patients in clinic.
06:03I don't have time to do this.
06:05So it's critical that we keep things in place the way they are now.
06:10Thank you. Thank you all.