Cancer and Politics

Tonight on CNN, Lance will be a guest of Larry King talking about how he is using his celebrity to wage a war on cancer and why this years Presidential campaign is such an important contest for the future of Americans living with cancer.

On top of that you all know that tomorrow is a very important day in the race to the White House so I thought it was fitting to share some of the recent success of the LIVESTRONG Army in getting the candidates on the record and keeping cancer a focus of this campaign.

A LIVESTRONG Army member here in Texas emailed Senator Obama’s campaign and got the following response. Here is the body of the email…

Subject: Some answers to your questions
Date: Fri, 29 Feb 2008 18:34:16 -0600
From: “Obama for America - Texas”
To: omitted

Hi,
Thank you for your patience. I’ve gotten a reply from our policy team to your questions (see below) on the Senator’s specific positions on cancer treatment and prevention.

I hope this helps you decide to vote for Barack Obama on March 4th.

Thanks again, and let us know if you have any other questions.

–The Obama Campaign in Texas—

Texas@BarackObama.com
http://Texas.BarackObama.com

—–Original Message—–

From: omitted
Sent: Friday, February 29, 2008 5:59 PM
To: omitted
Subject: RE: A policy question…

“What would you do to decrease cancer deaths in this country?”

As President, Barack Obama will make ending cancer the top priority it needs to be by increasing funding for the NIH, NCI, and other medical research grants. The fight against cancer is a critically important issue in the lives of millions of Americans. It needs to be a top priority for our government.

Senator Obama strongly believes we need to wage a war on cancer with far more resources. Although biomedical research costs are increasing each year, annual funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) have not kept up, and the last Congress actually cut cancer funding for the first time in a decade. This isn’t just counter-productive, it is a failure to keep faith with so many Americans who are in the fight of their lives against cancer, and it overlooks our country’s tradition of medical innovation.

We also have to invest more in prevention to decrease cancer deaths. Far too many patients are missing screenings, and as a consequence find themselves battling the disease at a late stage. Individuals and families must have access to essential clinical preventive services such as cancer screenings and smoking cessation programs, and the Obama health plan will require coverage of such services in all federally supported health plans, including Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP and the new public plan that he will create as part of his universal health care plan.

Senator Obama takes fighting cancer quite personally - he lost his mother to cancer, and often discusses the emotional toil of watching her worry about fighting with insurance companies in the final days of her lives. In the Illinois State Senate, he championed legislation expanding insurance company coverage of mammograms - a key law in the fight against breast cancer. In the US Senate, Obama was a lead sponsor of Johanna’s Law. Signed into law in January 2007, the law will educate women and increase awareness of ovarian cancer.

“Would your administration be in favor of a national ban on smoking in public places?”

Many local communities - like Senator Obama’s hometown of Chicago - are transitioning to bans on smoking in public places. Obama strongly supports these efforts.

“If elected President, would you work to significantly increase funding to the NCI and CDC?”

Yes.

Another member of the LIVESTRONG Army here in Texas attended an event at Dell’s corporate headquarters and asked Senator McCain…

“If elected President would he sign legislation to increase funding for cancer research?”

His reply was “Yes”. And went on to say “That many times it is the advocacy groups and lobbyists groups that have more power to present bills to increase funding.

We also had a member in Cincinnati a couple of weeks ago who spoke with Senator Clinton after a rally and asked her about her commitment to fighting cancer. She answered that she thought this was a top priority. You can see and read Senator Clinton’s remarks from last years LIVESTRONG Presidential forum here.

Let’s keep talking to all the candidates about this issue and making sure they know how important this is to Americans. If you get one of them to respond let us know by emailing grassroots@livestrong.org

Brendan