New Funding Will Help Fight Against Childhood Cancer

As childhood cancer funding remains at an all time-low, the fight to introduce new funding was taken on by those in government power. Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton (D-VA), for example, has taken the initiative by introducing a new version of a former bill that has the power to help tens of thousands of children who suffer from cancer and other debilitating diseases. The legislation was introduced back in January 2021 and is called the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0. The new legislation is not only an important step forward to help children battle cancer, but also a ray of hope for many kids in an otherwise disencouraging situation.

The Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0 was created in honor of Gabriella Miller, a very brave girl who sadly passed away at age 10 after being diagnosed with a rare type of brain cancer. Before Gabriella’s death in 2013, Gabriella wanted the people in office to start taking action and help children similar to her. Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton listened and stated that she is “proud to carry this legislation in Gabriella's honor, whose passionate advocacy changed the lives of countless other young children battling these illnesses." The research act focuses on collecting penalty money from illegal activities that pharmaceutical, cosmetic, supplement, and medical device companies take part in and putting it toward childhood cancer funding. In other words, the bill allows for a good cause to benefit from something bad in the long run. The funding from the bill will give way to new opportunities for many researchers and scientists to discover better cancer treatments or attainable cures. The re-directed money can also go towards any correlation between birth defects and childhood cancer, a discovery that can help save multiple childrens’ lives. As of now, the main reason for the deaths of many American children is pediatric cancer. According to Congressman Gus Bilirakis, sometimes children have to undergo the existing cancer treatments created for the adult body due to the lack of pediatric-specific treatments. With the help of the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0, a greater understanding of childhood cancer will prevail, possibly leading to the development of better treatments. Additionally, more and more elected officials are showing support for this bill, leading to the co-sponsorship by U.S. Senators Bob Casey (D-PA) and Marco Rubio (R-FL).

Back in 2014, the initial Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act was introduced by U.S. Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and Tim Kaine (D-VA). The former bill has seen extreme success after its 2014 signing by President Barack Obama: a grand sum of $88.2 million has been collected and distributed towards pediatric cancer research at the National Institutes of Health’s through the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Program. The goal of this initial research program was to aid scientists and researchers in the discovery of new insights into the biology of childhood cancer and structural birth defects because children born with defects are more likely to develop pediatric cancer in the future. Therefore, many researchers have come to the hypothesis that there might be a correlation between the two. With this idea in mind, the initial research program took the initiative to further their understanding by constructing a pediatric database of clinical and genetic data from both the families and the kid patients with childhood cancers and structural birth defects.

With only as little as 4% of the National Cancer Institute’s $6.56 billion budget directly targeted towards advancing pediatric cancer developments, the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0 and it’s new source of funding hold extreme importance in the future. If we have the ability to aim civil penalties towards the funding of childhood cancer research, then we, as a community and our elected legislators, should take advantage of that opportunity. The Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0 is doing just that. As of now, in the year 2021, it is estimated that around 10,500 children in the U.S. under the age of 15 will be diagnosed with some sort of cancer. Therefore, the research programs support has the ability to help many of those thousands of children in the long run.

Sources:

https://commonfund.nih.gov/kidsfirst

https://www.wfxrtv.com/news/regional-news/virginia-news/warner-kaine-among-senators-introducing-bipartisan-bill-to-support-childhood-cancer-research/

https://wexton.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=452