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Press Release

For Immediate Release
November 13, 2007
Contact: Sean C. Bonyun
(202) 225-3761

Upton Hails House Passage of Resolution Ensuring Lung Cancer is a National Health Priority
November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month

WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Fred Upton (R-St. Joseph), a senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, applauded today’s House passage of legislation, H.RES. 335, expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the President should declare lung cancer a public health priority and should implement a comprehensive interagency program to reduce the lung cancer mortality rate by at least 50 percent by 2015.  Upton, a leading sponsor of H.RES. 335, has been working for increased funding for cancer research.  The bipartisan measure passed the House this afternoon by voice vote.

“It is imperative that we shine the national spotlight on lung cancer and the devastating impact it has had on the American public,” said Upton.  “More funding will bring expanded research resulting in breakthrough treatments, but most important of all, it will bring more hope to those folks who have been diagnosed with lung cancer.  We have a responsibility in Congress to ensure that research for lung cancer is a national priority and that we set aside the necessary resources to fight the deadly disease.  While we have made great strides in cancer research over the decades, the mortality rate for lung cancer has essentially hung steady since 1971.    We have a dire responsibility to expand coordinated and comprehensive research - we cannot rest until we have a cure.”       

The statistics are alarming - lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths for both men and women, accounting for 28 percent of all cancer deaths.  Lung cancer kills more people annually than breast cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer, liver cancer, melanoma, and kidney cancer combined.

In 1971, President Nixon and Congress declared a War on Cancer, signing the National Cancer Act into law.  At that time, lung cancer was the leading cause of cancer death, and it still is today.  Funding for the National Cancer Institute grew from $400 million per year in 1971 to $4.78 billion in 2005.  Since 1971, coordinated and comprehensive research has raised the 5-year survival rates for breast cancer to 88 percent, for prostate cancer to 99 percent, and for colon cancer to 64 percent, but the 5-year survival rate for lung cancer is still only 15 percent and a similar coordinated and comprehensive research effort is required to achieve increases in lung cancer survivability rates.

Specifically, H.RES. 335 expresses the sense of the House that the President should:

(1) declare lung cancer a public health priority and immediately lead a coordinated effort to reduce the lung cancer mortality rate by 50 percent by 2015;

(2) direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services to increase funding for lung cancer research and other lung cancer-related programs as part of a coordinated strategy with defined goals, including--
(A) translational research and specialized lung cancer research centers;
(B) expansion of existing multi-institutional, population-based screening programs incorporating state-of-the-art image processing, centralized review, clinical management, and tobacco cessation protocols;
(C) research on disparities in lung cancer incidence and mortality rates;
(D) graduate medical education programs in thoracic medicine and cardiothoracic surgery;
(E) new programs within the Food and Drug Administration to expedite the development of chemoprevention and targeted therapies for lung cancer;
(F) annual reviews by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality of lung cancer screening and treatment protocols;
(G) the appointment of a lung cancer director within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with authority to improve lung cancer surveillance and screening programs; and
(H) lung cancer screening demonstration programs under the direction of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services;

(3) direct the Secretary of Defense, in conjunction with the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, to develop a broad-based lung cancer screening and disease management program among members of the Armed Forces and veterans, and to develop technologically advanced diagnostic programs for the early detection of lung cancer;

(4) appoint a Lung Cancer Scientific and Medical Advisory Committee, comprised of medical, scientific, pharmaceutical, and patient advocacy representatives, to--
(A) work with the National Lung Cancer Public Health Policy Board described in paragraph (5); and
(B) report to the President and Congress on the progress toward and the obstacles to achieving the goal described in paragraph (1) of reducing the lung cancer mortality rate by 50 percent by 2015; and

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