Conquer Childhood Cancer Act of 2007
We interrupt our normally scheduled Steadman family blog for a moment of political awareness.
The Conquer Childhood Cancer Act of 2007 was introduced a few months back, but has been slowing down despite having fairly wide bipartisan support. The bill sets aside $150M for research and education to fight pediatric cancer. It may seem like a huge chunk of money, but it’s less than half of what we spend every week in Iraq.
Most importantly (from my skewed view point focusing on pontine glioma), the bill creates a national database of childhood cancer incidents. I see this as a critical first step for understanding the causes of pediatric cancer. It’s frustrating that many of the regulations that protect our privacy put in place by HIPAA regulations also limit the information available to doctors and researchers. There’s been very little progress made in the fight to prevent or treat several forms of pediatric cancer despite the efforts of oncologists and the pharmaceutical industry. It seems like it’s time to take a step back from trying different combinations of drug that don’t work to gather some data about the children.
Cure Search has a great article on the bill if you’d like additional information.
