At a House Republican press conference Thursday of members who in private life have served in the medical profession, one North Carolina representative went right at Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in asking that his chamber take up and approve a spending bill that would help fund clinical trials for childhood cancer patients.
One day after Reid responded to a CNN reporter’s inquiry about passing House-approved piecemeal legislation that would appropriate money to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with “Why would we want to do that?” Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.) joined several colleagues, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), to request that Reid change course and consider the significance of keeping the NIH’s doors open to families seeking treatment for pediatric cancer.
“Before coming to Washington being a nurse, I’ve seen these families. I’ve seen the looks on their faces when they’re given hope. We have taken that hope away, and we need to replace it,” Ellmers said in reference to the government shutdown, which has caused the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md., to begin turning away patients, some of them childhood cancer sufferers, seeking clinical trials. “I say to Harry Reid and the Senate, bring this up for a vote. Don’t take hope away from those families. Don’t take hope away form those moms.”
Ellmers, a registered nurse of more than two decades before arriving in Washington, pointed to the serious conditions with which NIH patients are afflicted, saying that the NIH is often a “last bit of hope” for those seeking treatment.
“If you’ve ever seen the looks on a parent’s face when they’re told that their child has cancer, and then you take their hope away?” Ellmers said, her voice breaking. “The moment that they know that they can fight for it, they will. And we have to replace that. And I say to Harry Reid, please, please, of all this situation in Washington right now and all the politics, let this move forward, let’s get a vote in the Senate, let’s get it to the President, let’s replace it and give hope back to those families. Because I’ll tell you Senator Reid, you will not sleep until that happens.”
The House approved a bill to extend funding for the NIH 254-171 Wednesday evening, with 25 Democrats joining 229 Republicans voting yes. Reid has expressed opposition to take up such one-by-one measures during the government shutdown, saying that he wants the House to approve a Senate-passed spending plan that funds the full government instead.
