FOCUS: CANCER RESEARCH
Higgins makes Roswell's cancer fight his cause
“I’ve had skin cancer removed, my father had skin cancer. . . . I’ve lost people that I loved to cancer. . . . So have you.”—Rep. Brian Higgins
Published: April 08, 2009, 12:30 am
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WASHINGTON — In Buffalo, Rep. Brian Higgins is probably best known for advocating more money for the Buffalo waterfront and for fighting to bring the benefits of the Niagara Power Project back home.
But in his own life, and in the nation’s capital, he has taken on a far bigger battle. And he spelled it out last month before a meeting of cancer radiation therapists in a hotel near the Capitol.
“We developed, in our house, skin cancer as people in our community developed freckles: on a regular basis,” Higgins said, explaining his Irish Catholic roots in South Buffalo. “I’ve had skin cancer removed, my father had skin cancer, . . . and, like you, I’ve lost people that I loved to cancer. But that’s not the point. So have you, and so has everybody else.”
The point, Higgins added, “is that a great and good nation such as ours should be doing so much more to eradicate, to cure, to cut, to increase the survival rate of the leading cause of death for those under 85.”
And with little fanfare, Higgins has been pushing the nation to do just that.
Since his first term in Congress in 2006, Higgins has repeatedly pressed the House leadership to increase funding for cancer research, introduced legislation that would set up a National Cancer Trust Fund, and, with other Western New York lawmakers, pushed to keep Buffalo’s Roswell Park Cancer Institute at the forefront of federal funding.
He has spoken with advocates from across the nation to help them lobby Congress more effectively on cancer issues.
And he has learned so much about the latest in cancer therapies that he now talks about them in the kind of technical depth that a doctor would.
Add it all up, and it made Higgins a natural to speak at the American Society for Radiation Oncology’s recent Washington conference, said Dave Adler, the group’s assistant director of government relations.
“It was great for the doctors to hear directly from him,” Adler said. “He really had our folks energized” for their Capitol Hill lobbying efforts later in the day.
Higgins’ involvement in the cancer issue is nothing new — and, he stressed, it’s nothing personal. It dates from his days as an assemblyman, long before the day in 2006 when he decided to ask his doctor to look at the unusual blotch on his forearm.
Both Adler and Bob Williams, a Chautauqua County cancer survivor who travels to Washington to lobby for more cancer funding, said Higgins has made himself one of the most outspoken lawmakers on the issue.
“I’m so proud he’s my representative,” said Williams, who has made more than 500 trips from Chautauqua County to shuttle cancer patients for treatment at Roswell Park. “He believes in the same things us cancer people do.”
While several sources said Higgins has shown a strong interest in cancer issues ever since his stint in the Assembly early in the decade, Higgins said his interest peaked early in his first year in Congress, 2005.
The American Cancer Society took to Capitol Hill that year to lobby for a nonbinding resolution saying Congress “supports the goal of eliminating suffering and death due to cancer by 2015.”
“It just struck me that that should be America’s goal — and that we should insist on a massive federal investment behind cancer research, prevention and early detection,” Higgins said in an interview.
So Higgins went to work, learning as much as he could about the issue by reading books such as “The Cancer Treatment Revolution,” by Dr. David G. Nathan, and “The Anatomy of Hope: How People Prevail in the Face of Illness,” by Jerome Groopman.
And he started getting to know more people at Roswell Park, asking detailed questions about the research being conducted there.
“He wanted to know, in depth, how many people were being affected [by the research], what the impact actually was on people,” said Lisa A. Damiani, executive director of governmental affairs at Roswell Park.
By the time Democrats took control of the House in 2007, Higgins was ready with information to press on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., regarding increasing cancer funding and prepared to meet with cancer groups with a message that’s not always easy for them to take.
He noted that Congress, within the same month that it passed the resolution setting 2015 as a goal to find a cure for cancer, cut research funding to fight cancer.
“Don’t let Congress off that easily,” he told the assembled radiation oncologists, adding that the resolution had “no force of budget, no force of law behind it.”
That cut was one of several that caused federal cancer funding to fall by 17 percent over five years, and to Higgins, the results have been devastating. Whereas 30 percent of research grant applicants for that funding got approved in those earlier years, the figure then dropped to 9 percent.
“The point is: You can’t stop and start,” he said in the interview. “This hurts us. The consequence is that bright young cancer researchers leave the field.”
To Higgins, that’s not just a national issue; it’s a local issue. Roswell Park is one of only 41 comprehensive cancer centers nationwide, so its federal funding can follow the national trends.
Higgins wants Roswell Park to thrive to the point where the cancer center and the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus can fulfill their potential.
“It’s the basis of a new economy for Buffalo and Western New York,” he said.
Roswell Park has had to cut jobs in recent years.
“It’s going to turn around,” Higgins said. “Why are they cutting jobs? Because cancer research funding was cut 17 percent.”
That’s all going to change now, Higgins said, with President Obama’s proposal to double funding for the National Institutes of Health, including its cancer research. In other words, Higgins is likely to get what he has been fighting for for years now.
“At a time when there was limited political payback, he was committed to this issue,” said Dr. Donald L. Trump, president and chief executive officer of Roswell Park, who stressed that Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, D-Fairport, and Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N. Y., have also been great champions of the cancer center.
Higgins insisted that his family’s experience and his own were by no means the central motivational force behind his efforts.
He acknowledged, though, that his father suffered from a relatively mild form of skin cancer all over his body. And soon after the congressman became active on cancer issues in 2005, he went to the doctor about an unusual spot on his wrist. It turned out to be the same kind of cancer his father had.
“I had a spot there,” he said, pointing at his left forearm. “It’s really irrelevant.”
What really matters, Higgins said, is that Congress and the president are now in sync with the fight he has been waging since he entered Congress to dramatically increase funding for cancer research.
“I think I have an appreciation for what that translates into,” he said. “It’s about bringing those 100 to 150 smart drugs that are in various phases of discovery and pushing them into the market within the next three to five years.
“For me, that’s fascinating for what it’s going to do to increase the survival rate of people diagnosed with cancer.”
jzremski@buffnews.com
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