Patty Murray Presses Expert Amid Women’s Health Cuts_ Is ‘Now The Time’ To Cut Breast Cancer Research_

Forbes Breaking News

During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) questioned Dr. Barry Paul Sleckman, the Director of University of Alabama at Birmingham’s O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center, about funding cuts to women’s health research.

Transcript

00:00Vice Chair Murray. Thank you. Emily, thank you so much for being here to share your story and

00:06Charlie's story and your experience at Seattle Children's. I can't imagine what you've gone

00:11through to make sure Charlie got the right care and treatment, and I'm glad to know that thanks

00:16to the National Cancer Institute clinical trial, she is now cancer-free. But we know that life-saving

00:23cancer clinical trials are on the chopping block. In less than 100 days, the Trump administration

00:29has terminated 55 NIH cancer research grants. That's more than $137 million that has been

00:38ripped away from researchers in 18 states. And on top of that, the leaked budget from this

00:44administration shows they plan to cut NIH funding nearly in half. So, Emily, if half of the

00:51cancer clinical trials were suddenly canceled, what would that mean for patients like Charlie

00:56and the people you know on the cancer ward at Seattle Children's?

01:01It would be devastating. There's no other option often than a clinical trial. And how can you

01:08look at these families and say, we're taking away the only option to save your child? There's

01:13no funding. It feels like the government doesn't care about families like ours if they take that

01:19away. It will be futures like left in the balance. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Dr. Parikh,

01:28for the last three months, NIH has awarded billions of dollars less in funding over the same period from

01:34previous years. For a 10-day stretch in February, NIH did not award a single grant. That is unprecedented

01:41for an agency that typically awards about 60,000 grants a year. And meanwhile, President Trump has

01:49fired or pushed out nearly 5,000 NIH employees, including grant administrators whose job it is

01:56to get that funding out the door. So I wanted to ask you at this rate, do you think NIH will be able

02:02to spend the $47 billion Congress passed and President Trump signed into law? Thank you for that. If the

02:09will is there, they can because I know the program folks that are still there and they will work harder

02:14than anybody to work with the scientists in the field to do the peer review to get those dollars out

02:18because those dollars are not about just getting money out the door. It's about funding the ideas

02:22that have been proposed. And there are plenty of proposals. There are plenty of good ideas.

02:25We don't fund enough. The pay lines are already at 20 and 10 percent. We need to make sure that we do

02:30get those dollars out because otherwise it will be impoundment by default. Well, we know that they

02:35have canceled peer review panels and they're firing staff. So can they get that funding out the door

02:41effectively? Only if it becomes a priority. Only if it becomes a priority. We have to make sure that

02:47it can go out. I'm confident that it can if they make it a priority. I have not seen that yet.

02:51The they is the NIH, the NIH administrators, the leaders, and the Department of Health and Human

02:56Services. We have to be able to say that we are going to start awarding these grants at the rate

03:00that it requires to get to the fully appropriated amount that you all, you all approved at the end of

03:05last fiscal year. To your knowledge, has that been done? Not yet. The rate isn't quite there yet.

03:11Okay. Thank you. Dr. Selectman, let me turn to you. After 34 years, the Trump administration

03:18announced it was going to stop the Women's Health Initiative. That's a long-term first-of-kind

03:25project that was launched actually in 1991 to study cancer and heart disease and osteoporosis in

03:32postmenopausal women. And thanks to that research, 126,000 cases of breast cancer and 76,000 cases of

03:41heart disease were prevented over a decade. The Fred Hutch Cancer Center Research in my state is the

03:49clinical coordinating center and one of the four regional centers that was told last week that its

03:54funding was being terminated. Supposedly it's back, but that is very unclear right now. The annual funding for

04:01these centers costs about $10 million. That's less than half, by the way, of what taxpayers spend on

04:07President Trump's golf trips, just in case you were keeping track over the last three months,

04:11but $10 million. How important, I wanted to ask you, is sex in the diagnosis of treatment of cancer?

04:19And do you think now is the time to be cutting breast cancer research?

04:23Yeah, thank you for that question, Senator.

04:25You know, let me say, let me make a comment first about the women's health study. These types of

04:31studies are essential for cancer and understanding the basis of cancer. This is a very long-term study,

04:39not a five-year grant, something where they've been following women for decades and using that

04:45information to understand about cancer risk and then make informed decisions about cancer prevention.

04:52These types of studies could only be funded in a large, organized way through the federal government,

05:00the NIH, and the NCI. I think getting back to your question is that it's extremely important

05:07to study the differences, biological differences between men and women when it comes to cancer risk,

05:14cancer progression, and cancer treatment. Extremely important. There are large groups at all,

05:20pretty much all, NCI cancer centers that either take that into account when they're designing a trial

05:26or are studying it specifically. Absolutely important. Thank you for that question.

05:30Thank you very much.

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