POUGHKEEPSIE – Chronic Lyme and other tick-borne diseases have been successfully added to the 21st Century Cures bill, which recently passed the House of Representatives.
Congressmen Christopher Gibson (R, NY19) and Sean Patrick Maloney (D, NY18), who spearheaded the addition, explained the bill’s importance at a news conference in Poughkeepsie on Monday.
Maloney, speaking, Gibson, 2nd from left, County Executive Marcus Molinaro, left, voice support for the
bipartisan federal legislation
The Tick-borne Disease Research Transparency and Accountability Act, authored by Gibson and co-sponsored by Maloney, was inserted into the 21st Century Cures Act last May, which then passed the House on July 10 by a vote of 344 to 77. It accelerates the drug approval process and gives patients better access to clinical trials.
“When it comes to Lyme disease, the days of denial are over, and the days of action are coming” Maloney noted. “If you’re keeping score, this is bipartisanship – one; Lyme disease – zero. So much of the problem up to now, has been that we can’t get people to take this seriously.”
With 300,000 cases of Lyme in the United States, 96 percent fall within 13 states, he noted.
“Nowhere is Lyme more of a scourge than right here in Dutchess County and the Hudson Valley,” Maloney said. “It has taken far too long to get the federal government serious about this; the federal government needs to get its act together.”
Maloney said the 21st Century Cures Act has good prospects in the US Senate, with promises of support from the White House and both New York senators.
Gibson noted how current regulations were drafted decades before the
information revolution. “Now is the time to re-arrange the regulatory
state to reflect those realities; all these possibilities that are out
there,” he said. Nine billion dollars in federal research investment,
paid through partial sell-off of the strategic oil reserve, will stimulate
the economy and enhance competitiveness.
“It is so refreshing to have two members of any legislative body working together, and for us in the Hudson Valley working on an issue extremely important to the people of our area,” said Dutchess County Executive Marcus Molinaro.
