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---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 16:36:57 EST From: [log in to unmask] To: [log in to unmask] As Vice President, Al Gore worked through his Reinventing Government Initiative to ensure that consumers gain access to important new drugs and medical. Under this initiative, the FDA has modernized and streamlined the approval process for new therapies, enacted policies that allow patients access to therapies for serious and life-threatening conditions before they are approved for marketing, and expanded consumers' access to information about new uses of approved products by allowing manufacturers to distribute information about unapproved uses of drugs and medical devices. As a result of these and other Administration policies, Americans with Parkinson's, cancer, and other serious conditions now have access to major innovative drugs much sooner. The agency has cut new drug approval times nearly in half, while the number of new drugs approved in a year has doubled. In addition to removing barriers to consumer use of new therapies, Al Gore has also supported efforts to remove barriers to new research. Recognizing the potential applications of stem cells for treating people with diabetes, heart disease, Parkinson's disease, cancer, and spinal cord injury, the Vice President supported the administration's work to ensure patients the full benefits of this technology by working with the NIH and the National Bioethics Advisory Commission to create guidelines that allow for federal funding of this research and ensure it is conducted in the most ethical manner. Al Gore also worked to pass the Work Incentives Improvement Act, which creates a new Medicaid demonstration that will allow states to increase health care access for people with chronic diseases who are able to and want to work but cannot get health insurance and care because of their conditions. This program will help people with Parkinson's, diabetes, muscular dystrophy and other serious diseases to get the medical care they need before their conditions deteriorate to the point where they can no longer work. As president, Al Gore will continue to invest in and remove barriers to biomedical research and to increase access to life-saving and life-improving therapies for people with serious diseases. Al Gore believes that, to build on the work that has already been done and make sure we have a healthier America in the 21st century, we need significant increases in biomedical research. Gore would increase investment in biomedical research and would work to bring together the worlds of biomedical research and information technology by helping to create 20 centers of excellence in biomedical computing on the campuses of our finest schools. With these investments we can deliver on the limitless potential for new treatments, diagnostics, and personalized medicine created by the Human Genome Project and other wise investments of the past seven years.