A singing star from Missouri tells Congress there’s no reason to play politics with a disease she has fought. Kennet native Sheryl Crow knows breast cancer. She says she remembers President Nixon declaring war on cancer when she was in high school. Twenty-five years later, she says, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent surgery in the fall of 2006.
Crow has told a House subcommittee on health she wants to know why she caught breast cancer. She has no family history of the disease. And she says the research the bill would authorize could answer questions about how the environment affects cancer development.
The bill would provide 200-million dollars in the next five years for research into that possible environmental connection.
Several Republican and federal health officials oppose the bill, saying it sets research priorities that could hamper current efforts on cancer and on other diseases.
But Crow says the bill should be passed because it’s time to act, not talk. "I don’t live in a political world and while this might seem like a political discussion, until you are the one in seven women diagnosed with breast cancer, you will never know how NOT political this is," she told the committee.
A companion bill requires health insurers to pay for at least 48 hours in the hospital after breast cancer treatment, ending what some call "drive through mastectomies"
It’s not known when an effort will be made to get the bill to the floor.