Week Ending June 18

TheWeekInCongress.com

Week Ending June 18, 2004

House Resolution 669 Prostate Cancer Awareness

BRIEF

Congress finds that an estimated 230,000 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed in the United States, and nearly 30,000 men in the United States will die from prostate cancer making it the second leading cause of cancer death in men in the United States. The disease cost $4,700,000,000 annually in the United States for treatment costs.

Congress also finds that African American men are diagnosed with and die from prostate cancer more frequently than men of other ethnic backgrounds and it often strikes elderly people in the United States, highlighting the importance of balancing the potential benefits and risks of various treatments on an individual basis.

Noting success in education about the disease and recognizing the effort made by many organizations to help patients understand and prevent prostate cancer, Congress concludes that ‘education among health care providers and patients regarding the need for prostate cancer screening tests has resulted in the diagnosis of approximately 86 percent of prostate cancer patients before the cancerous cells have spread appreciably beyond the prostate gland, thereby enhancing the odds of successful treatment.’

Consequently, Congress sees itself as an organization and as individual members in the position to support the fight against prostate cancer, to help raise public awareness about the need to make screening tests available to all people at risk for prostate cancer, and to provide prostate cancer patients with adequate information to assess the relative benefits and risks of treatment options.

The potential complication rates for significant side effects vary among the most common forms of treatment for prostate cancer, so, it is the sense of Congress that Federal and State governments should ensure that health care providers supply prostate cancer patients with appropriate information and other tools necessary for those patients to receive readily understandable descriptions of the advantages, disadvantages, benefits and risks of all medically efficacious (effective or efficient) treatments including brachytherapy, hormone treatments, external beam radiation, chemotherapy, surgery and watchful waiting.

Sponsor: Representative Nathan Deal (R-GA)

Vote: Passed House by voice vote.