Bills Address Women's Health and Cancer Issues

WASHINGTON--Cancer ranked high among a package of seven Senate billsintroduced by Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), all of them intended to addresswomen's health issues.

The "Consumer Involvement in Breast Cancer Act" would requirethe National Institutes of Health to include breast cancer advocates inits decision-making on breast cancer research.

Under the "Breast Cancer Screening Act of 1997," the NationalCancer Institute would have to reissue the mammog-raphy guidelines forwomen in their 40s that it dropped in 1993.

The "Breast Cancer Research Extension Act of 1997" would increasethe funding authorization for breast cancer research in fiscal year 1998,which begins Oct. 1, by $59 million, to a total of $590 million.

In addition, Sen. Snowe's "One-Stop Shopping Information Service"bill, co-introduced by Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif), would require thesecretary of Health and Human Services to establish a database of all publicand private clinical trials in the United States that patients with life-threateningillnesses could access via a toll-free telephone number.