DeLauro Honors National Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer Week

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of declaring the last week of September to be National Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer Week and the last Wednesday of September to be National Previvor Day.

I want to thank my colleagues who have spoken this morning and all of whom have dealt in some way with the issue of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, or maybe some other form of cancer. It is probably the worst day of your life when you are given a cancer diagnosis. You are not listening to what any doctor says, you are only consumed with understanding whether or not you are going to live or die or what is going to happen to your family, if such a death should occur.

After heart disease, cancer is still the second leading cause of death in America, breast cancer the most common cancer diagnosis. In 2006, over 40,000 women died from this disease. Ovarian cancer, meanwhile, is the fifth most common cancer among women. Close to 14,000 of our friends and family are expected to perish from ovarian cancer this year.

Perhaps the saddest thing about these grim numbers is that some of these deaths are readily preventable. Thanks to modern science we know much more about the genetic and hereditary precursors of these cancers and can identify the women most at risk, the previvors, who are predisposed to develop them.

We also know that women who catch their ovarian cancer at an earlier stage are over three times more likely to survive the disease than those who do not. Sadly, over 60% of the women diagnosed with ovarian cancer between 1999 and 2006 fell into this latter category.

Similarly, women diagnosed with breast cancer early are more than four times more likely to survive the disease than women diagnosed at a later stage. And yet one in five women over age 50 has not had a mammogram in the past two years.

We have worked to address these troubling statistics with the preventive care reform and the Affordable Care Act, but there is no substitute for awareness and that is why I strongly support this resolution and encourage all women and particularly previvors with a genetic disposition for these cancers to get tested early and get tested often.

24 years ago, it was an early diagnosis of ovarian cancer that saved my life. It was accidental. It should not be accidental. People should not survive by accident. It is so critically important that this resolution pass. It can save women and their families. I was lucky. My life was given back to me. I was given a second chance. Let's give our families, the women in this country a first chance and a second chance to survive.