| Dr Blumenthal’s Introduction ofCongressman Henry Waxman (D-CA)

It is my great pleasure and honor to introduce to you oneof the Congress’ leading health advocates. For 16 years in the House ofRepresentatives, Congressman Henry Waxman had devoted his attention to strengtheningFederal programs that improve the health of Americans. Both during his tenure as Chairmanof the Health and Environment Subcommittee of the House of Representatives and since,Congressman Waxman has played a major role in shaping programs that protect the air webreathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink. His longstanding involvement in healthissues is exemplified by his actions on behalf of women’s health. For example-

It was Henry Waxman who authored the Breast and CervicalCancer Mortality Prevention Act that has literally saved millions of women’s livesthrough early detection of these diseases.

It was Henry Waxman who was a champion of the women’shealth research priorities at the National Institutes of Health—ensuring that womentoday are included in all clinical research trials. It was Henry Waxman who has led thenational charge against smoking, particularly among adolescents. And it is Henry Waxmanwho continues to be a strong advocate and supporter of women’s reproductive rights.

It is safe to say that without Henry Waxman, women’shealth policy would not be where it is today. Congressman Waxman may be representing the29th district of California, but clearly, he has been a champion in the Housefor women’s health and for that we are all indebted. We thank him for his leadership,vision, and commitment to improving the lives of all Americans, especially thenation’s women.

Congressman Henry Waxman(D-CA)

You heard all those things that wouldn’t have happenedif it weren’t for Henry Waxman, but let me tell you, if it weren’t for JanetWaxman, I don’t think we would be holding this conference today.

I’ve been part of the women’s health agenda forthe time I’ve been in the Congress, but I didn’t know until my wife told meabout it that autoimmune diseases so disproportionately affect women. I don’t thinkmost people realize that autoimmunity is a set of diseases, much of which are chronic,that target women in such a disproportionate way.

As I think about the women’s health agenda, I mustcomment to you that 10 years ago a conference like this would never have been held.Because 10 years ago, no one thought about women’s health. Not until theCongressional Caucus on Women’s Issues, and I, as the Chairman of the HealthSubcommittee, requested the General Accounting Office (GAO) to do a study, did we learn in1989 that women were not part of the clinical trials to look at a number of the diseasesand how they might be affected by those clinical trials. Women were just excluded. Itwasn’t just discrimination on women’s issues or women’s health problems,women were not even being included as participants. That study was remarkable. As a resultof that study, I think a lot of people woke up to the fact that women’s health neededmore of a focus. That turning point was due to the work of the Congressional Caucus onWomen’s Issues. At that time it was chaired by Pat Schroeder, Congress member fromColorado, and Olympia Snowe, then a member of Congress from the state of Maine.

By 1993, we finally adopted legislation that insured womenwere included in clinical trials. Until then, this legislation was vetoed by PresidentBush who, by the way, among other reasons for vetoeing the bill, didn’t like thefetal tissue research component. But the veto sent a message that he didn’t want anOffice of Research on Women’s Health at NIH. He didn’t want a requirement thatwomen be participants in clinical trials because that might set us on the course toquotas. Thus, President Bush vetoed the bill.

In 1992, President Clinton was elected. We were finallyable to pass the bill into law, and in that legislation we wrote into law that all NIHsupported clinical research had to include representative samples of women and minoritiesunless there was a medical reason not to. We set in law the Office of Research onWomen’s Health at NIH and we initiated an NIH research agenda on women’s healthto address priorities.

In the 1990s, we adopted the Breast and Cervical CancerPrevention Act which asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to screen forcancer prevention, especially among women who had no health insurance and no access tocare. We adopted a Mammography Quality Standards Act, and we put into effect a DESeducation and research program at NIH to support research and training, which includedinformation on DES. In that bill, we set up the beginning of a landmark study on theimpact of the environment as a cause for breast cancer in an area of the country where thebreast cancer rates are exceedingly high, in Long Island, New York.

The environmental link to these diseases is something thatI think we need to explore more fully. Today, we are going to take up the Safe DrinkingWater Act, and at our insistence we are going to have a provision that would provideestrogenic screening by the Environmental Protection Agency to assess whether certainchemicals mimic estrogens. We’ve heard about that as a concern for breast cancer. ButI believe, as I have been reading in the popular press, that there is a greater linkbetween these kinds of chemicals and autoimmune diseases as well. There was an excellentarticle in the *Los Angeles Times* about some of the research in this area. We needto know more about the environmental causes of disease and how to prevent these diseases.I think these environmental concerns, must receive a higher priority.

This *Healthy Women 2000* conference, under theleadership of Dr Susan Blumenthal, is looking at autoimmunity as an underlying cause ofover 80 chronic illnesses that target women approximately over 70% of the time, and Idon’t think the public has a full awareness of that. I know I didn’t until mywife told me, "Pay attention, this is really important." We have, as a result ofthis ignorance, failure even by medical professionals to diagnose correctly what may be anautoimmune disease, and to treat properly, and for researchers to have a clear focus aswell. When we have nine times the number of women over men that have lupus andSjogren’s disease, three times scleroderma, twice as many for MS, we have torecognize that this conference and the work that you’re undertaking today is soimportant to the women’s health agenda. It is as important as it was in the earlyyears, when we recognized that women have to be part of the clinical trials, and thatdiseases that predominantly affect women have to be given a clear priority.

We can’t afford to have unfocused and scatteredresearch. A conference like this should give you all an opportunity to learn from eachother, to share your research, to share your findings. We need more collaboration, notonly of researchers who are funded by the NIH, but those outside of the NIH as well. Weneed to understand what has been studied, what needs to be studied, and to develop anagenda that will not only benefit women, but benefit men as well. As we try to discoverand unlock the mystery of autoimmune diseases, diseases that take such an enormous toll onso many people, we will improve the health of both men and women. 

Conferences like this one sponsored by the Office onWomen’s Health in the Department of Health and Human Services are placing autoimmuneissues on the women’s health agenda. I am pleased that you have come together and Iappreciate the fact that you invited me to come and say a few words. I wish you all thevery best. We need your active work in this area. We need you to tell us, those of us whoare policy makers, what policies we should make. Finally we need to encourage all theresearchers to collaborate fully and to understand that those issues that they might nothave realized as women’s health issues are very much an important part of thatagenda.

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