Remarks at Vermont Breast Cancer Conference Sheraton Hotel & Conference Center Burlington, Vermont

May 29, 1998

As I look around the room, I see many familiar faces of people I have worked with over the years.  It is all of you who have helped push Vermont to a leading role in the movement to understand, treat and cure breast cancer, and you give us the energy to continue to fight in Congress to step up research funding until we find the cure.

It was you who came to see me in early 1992 saying, "It is time to wage war on this disease and put a stop to it."

Soon after that I was joined by others in launching a congressional campaign to eradicate breast cancer.  We began by introducing a resolution urging the Secretary of Health and Human Services to declare breast cancer a public health emergency.  The resolution raised public awareness about this breast cancer and sent a strong signal that we needed to accelerate action on all fronts.

We know that each year, with the seeds we continue to sow in the fields of research, we are closer to a cure.  Today I would like to touch on some of these current developments and efforts.

The war on breast cancer is particularly important to the women of Vermont and other Eastern states because we have a disproportionately high percentage of women who die from breast cancer.  That is a disturbing pattern.  By now it has been widely recognized, and it has  stimulated research questions and considerable public interest.

Recently we have had some insight into regional differences from studies that looking into known breast cancer risk factors.  For example, researchers have found that women in the Northeast are more likely to delay having children or to not have children at all  which are both known breast cancer risk factors  when compared with women in other regions of the country.

And researchers continue to study whether other established breast cancer risk factors may also contribute to these regional differences.

In looking at the regional differences, scientists and the public have questioned whether environmental hazards may be partly responsible for the elevated death rates for breast cancer we have seen in the Northeast and the MidAtlantic states.

To help find answers, Congressman Sanders and I introduced legislation in 1992 to charter the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic Breast Cancer Study to find out why breast cancer hits women in Vermont and other Eastern states hardest.  That study was part of a larger bill that we introduced, the Cancer Registries Amendment Act, which created a nationwide cancer surveillance system to tell us about regional cancer differences.

I applaud Bernie Sanders for his relentless devotion to this issue.

The LeahySanders breast cancer study is being spearheaded by the National Cancer Institute, working closely with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

It targets the specific concerns of women in Vermont and eight other states that have the highest breast cancer mortality rates.  Six investigative teams in this program are independently gauging the effects of measurable environmental exposures, such as pesticides, electromagnetic fields, occupational exposures, radiation, and diet.  They are also collecting information on known risk factors for breast cancer from women participating in the studies.

They will crunch the numbers and come back to us with their final statistical findings later this year, and then they will report their conclusions sometime during the following 18 months.

In the meantime, preliminary data suggest that environmental chemicals where we live may not do much to tell us why individuals develop breast cancer.  However, though no firm residential link has yet been established, this raises the question of any links that may yet be found with how long individuals reside in an area and their ages while living there.

For instance, two investigative teams have reported observing no association between the pesticide DDT and  breast cancer risk.

Others have found that individual susceptibility factors, including some that are genetic, help to identify subgroups of women who are at higher risk of breast cancer when they are exposed to certain elements.   For example, in the small numbers of women studied, those who are less able to detoxify cigarette smoke were found to have an increased risk of developing breast cancer.

Building on these early findings, the investigative teams are exploring interactions between environmental exposures and genetic factors, and they are collaborating to compare their data, looking for similarities and differences in the women they studied who live in different areas.  This may lead to a better understanding of the relationship between environment and breast cancer.

The investigators have periodically reported their progress at scientific meetings and in scientific journals.  I will make a reference list of these reports available.

Still other research is under way to shed light on reasons for the geographic patterns of elevated breast cancer rates in the Northeast.  Vermont is among the 24 states included in one of NCI's studies.  And NIH has a new initiative to fund studies on regional variations, by emphasizing research on markers  including environmental exposures  that may help us to understand why there are regional differences, and studies of gene interactions and risk of cancer.

Although any one study will focus on a specific population, the investigators aim to find answers than can be generalized beyond the study participants and their specific locations — so that we can find answers to help all women.

The Institutes at the NIH are conducting a broad base of research on the basic biology and causes of breast cancer; on its detection, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention; and on rehabilitation and survivorship issues.

I will leave the actual research to the many good investigators here at the Vermont Cancer Center and around the country.

My job is to make sure that important studies get the federal support critical to finding a cure.

Congress has made it clear that it plans to continue to increase research funding at the NIH.

I will also keep a vigilant watch to ensure the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research program continues to spawn its incredible innovations in medical research.  To date this unlikely  source of funding that we have carved out, dedicated to breast cancer research, has received more than $700 million.

I will continue to fight in Congress to increase medical research dollars, working with stalwarts in this cause like Bernie Sanders.  And I will continue to work to find innovative ways to find even more funding until we find a cure to this devastating disease.