Vermont's `Patnership' (Pat Barr & Pat Leahy) Nears BillionDollar Milestone In Securing PentagonFunded Breast Cancer Research

(S. BURLINGTON, VT., April 16)

Sen. Patrick Leahy says a Pentagonfunded breast cancer research program that he, Sen. Tom Harkin (DIowa) and others launched seven years ago may top the billiondollar mark this year. And when it happens, Leahy says, Bennington breast cancer survivor and activist Pat Barr will deserve much of the credit.

Leahy spoke Friday in South Burlington at the Vermont Cancer Center Breast Cancer Conference's luncheon tribute to Pat Barr, who led the nationwide grassroots effort to build continued support for the program.

Beginning in federal fiscal year 1992, Leahy, Harkin and their allies succeeded in earmarking Pentagon funds for breast cancer research, just as Pentagon funds had been used earlier for important work directed against prostate cancer. They succeeded, and Barr headed a citizens' lobbying campaign that helped Leahy and his Senate colleagues to keep the program going. By now they have garnered $830 million to battle breast cancer, and this year the total funds secured may pass the $1 billion mark. The program by now has become one of the nation's most significant sources of anti-breast cancer funding.

"Pat Barr did all this with class, with dignity, with a sense of humor, and with a gentle but steely determination to do what is right, what is good, and what is just," said Leahy in his tribute to Barr.

"I can remember when Tom Harkin and I brought this amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill seven years ago, we were told, 'Nothing like this has ever been done before,'" Leahy recalled. "It was F. Scott Fitzgerald who said, 'If you are strong enough...there are no precedents.' There are no precedents for Pat Barr. Pat Barr has been strong enough to set a precedent for all of us."