President Obama signed major biomedical legislation into law Tuesday that gives billions of dollars to medical research and aims to speed up the development of new drugs and devices.
The 21st Century Cures Act provides $6.3 billion in funding for medical research stretched out over a decade. Included in that is $1 billion to fight opioid abuse. About $4.8 billion will go to the National Institutes of Health, with money also going to the president’s precision medicine initiative and an initiative to help cure brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and epilepsy.
Obama pointed out during a White House signing ceremony Tuesday afternoon that the bill received wide bipartisan support.
“I think it indicates the power of this issue and how deeply it touches every family across America,” he said.
Vice President Joe Biden’s cancer moonshot initiative to try to jump start cancer research, which is named after his late son, Beau, received more than $1 billion in the package.
“God willing, this bill will literally save lives. It gives millions of Americans hope,” Biden said during the signing ceremony.
Another $1 billion will go to states as grants to help fight opioid abuse, and the Food and Drug Administration will get $500 million to install parts of the law.
The law also hopes to speed up development of new cures by creating a new pathway for breakthrough medical devices. It enables the FDA to approve drugs by a lower standard of evidence if they are desperately needed.
Reps. Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Diana Degette, D-Colo., spearheaded the package, which passed the House last year. It stalled in the Senate due to disagreements on how much funding to give NIH, but a compromise led by Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn.. was reached during the lame-duck session.
A revamped version of the bill, which includes mental health reform, passed the House 392-26.
About a week later, the Senate passed it via a 94-5 margin, despite objections from liberal Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Both senators complained the law was a handout to the pharmaceutical industry.
Liberal groups such as advocacy group Public Citizen said the law could roll back the FDA’s safety protections to ensure only safe products hit the market.
