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Floor Speech

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Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I rise today to support passage of two bipartisan bills aimed at continuing the significant progress we are making in treating and, one day, preventing and curing Alzheimer's disease.

These bills--S. 133, the National Alzheimer Project Act, or NAPA, as it is referred to, Reauthorization Act, and S. 134, the Alzheimer Accountability and Investment Act would help coordinate the tools of the Federal Government toward reaching these important goals.

And I would note, on the floor is the cochair of the Alzheimer's task force in the Senate, Senator Markey, along with the other two cosponsors we are fortunate to have, Senators Warner and Capito.

When I first joined the Senate in 1997, there really wasn't much of a focus on Alzheimer's in Washington. It was often called senility and was thought of not as a disease but just as part of growing old.

To increase public awareness of Alzheimer's disease, to advance research, and to bring the disease to the forefront of the Congressional agenda, I founded the Congressional Task Force on Alzheimer's in 1999 here in the Senate.

A true milestone in focusing our efforts was the passage of the Bipartisan National Alzheimer's Project Act that I coauthored with then-Senator Evan Bayh in 2011.

Before we passed that legislation, which became known as NAPA, there was no coordinated strategic plan to focus our efforts to defeat this devastating disease and ensure that our resources were maximized and leveraged.

NAPA tackled this problem by convening a panel of experts to create a coordinated strategic plan to prevent and effectively treat Alzheimer's disease by the year 2025, an ambitious goal, to be sure.

The expert council updates its plan annually. While the 2025 goal regrettably will not be met, it was still important to set an ambitious objective in order to spur research and to instill hope.

And, indeed, since then, researchers have made great strides in understanding this complex disease. To put our progress in context, 20 years ago we knew of only four genes that were associated with Alzheimer's disease. Now, researchers have identified more than 70 associated genetic areas, opening multiple new avenues for potential prevention and treatment.

There is another point that helps put this into perspective. In the early 2000s, the only sure way to know whether a person had Alzheimer's was through an autopsy.

Since then, the National Institutes of Health Research has led to the development of imaging techniques, biomarker tests, and data-driven approaches to enable more precise and earlier diagnoses.

And, most recently, decades of NIH research have paved the way for disease-modifying therapies targeting amyloid plaques' role in certain dementias.

After directing this decade of progress, the National Alzheimer's Project Act law is scheduled to expire soon. We must reauthorize the law to ensure that research investments remain coordinated to maximize their impact.

Toward that end, I introduced the NAPA Reauthorization Act with Senator Warner, which would extend NAPA through 2035 and modernize the legislation to reflect the strides that have been made to better understand the disease, such as including a new focus on promoting healthy aging, reducing risk factors, and supporting family caregivers.

The NAPA Reauthorization Act will allow the important work of the expert panel to continue through 2035. Among its provisions, the bill would reauthorize and expand the Advisory Council that assists annually in the development and evaluation of the National Plan. It will also ensure that underserved populations, including individuals with Down syndrome who are at greatly increased risk for Alzheimer's as they age, are included in this important work.

I have also introduced the Alzheimer's Accountability and Investment Act with my colleague from Massachusetts who has been such a leader in this area. It would continue through the year 2035 a requirement that the NIH submit an annual budget directly to Congress, estimating the funding necessary to fully implement NAPA's research goals.

Only two other areas of biomedical research--cancer and HIV/AIDS-- have been the subject of special budget development aimed at speeding discovery. This ``bypass budget'' helps us understand what additional funding is required to find better treatments, a means of prevention, and ultimately a cure.

As cochair along with Senators Warner, Capito, and Markey of the Congressional Task Force on Alzheimer's, I am committed to this effort both on a personal level as well as professionally as a Senator concerned about the impact on our families and our healthcare budgets.

On a personal level, I know just how devastating this disease is. I just recently lost my brother-in-law to the disease. My father, grandfather, and two of my uncles also succumbed to Alzheimer's. It is truly a heartbreaking disease. It is heartbreaking when you talk to a loved one and receive only a confused look in reply.

Alzheimer's disease is also one of the greatest health challenges of our time. It is currently ranked as the seventh leading cause of death in the United States, and nearly 7 million Americans are living with the disease. It is also one of the most expensive diseases for society, costing an estimated $360 billion last year alone.

Reauthorization of NAPA and the Alzheimer's Accountability and Investment Act would ensure our country is maintaining momentum in our fight against Alzheimer's, just as our investments in research are beginning to translate into promising new treatments.

Both laws have no mandatory spending effects, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Both bills are cosponsored by nearly half the Members of this Senate. Both bills have wide-ranging support from national stakeholders, including the Alzheimer's Association, Us Against Alzheimer's, the National Down Syndrome Society, and the National Down Syndrome Congress. And both bills were reported out of the Senate HELP Committee with broad bipartisan support last summer.

In order to change the trajectory of this disease that otherwise is projected to claim the minds of 13.8 million seniors and nearly surpass $1 trillion in annual costs by 2050, Congress has a responsibility to pursue effective public policy.

Ultimately, I think we are going to discover that this is a multifactorial disease, and that is why all of the research that is going on is so critical to finding effective treatments, a means of prevention, and, one day, a cure. And that is the purpose of these two bills.

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