Dear Parents:
The biggest obstacle to finding new cures or treatments for your children is the inability of doctors to conduct clinical research to prove that they work. Thick barriers ranging from government regulation to the threat of litigation block the clinical testing of new medical therapies even when they are successfully tested in the best scientific laboratories. How, then, can we solve the problem?
FIM has proposed that the "The Doctornaut Act" can quickly and effectively break through this powerful therapeutic bottleneck. A Doctornaut is a physician who can more freely volunteer as subject for clinical research and also be able to take greater risks than a non-physician volunteer. The Doctornaut Act would allow the physician to freely take this risk.
The good news is that medical breakthroughs discovered in adult Doctornauts, such as a successful gene transfer or brain neural tissue implantation, can rapidly be made available to children.
Doctornauts will do for medical science what Astronauts do for space exploration. These doctors will bravely take the risks in order to discover cures and treatments that will benefit mankind. But to make Doctornauts a reality, Congress must pass a new law. The Doctornaut Act (the full text can be found on the FIM website), fortunately, has attracted the attention of Senator Bill Frist, M.D., the only medical doctor in the Senate. As a young doctor, Senator Frist conducted clinical research and full wellfully appreciates the importance of the complicated process of medical discovery. In fact, one of Dr. Frist's major objectives is "To speed new medical therapies from the bench of the laboratory scientists to the bedside of patients."
Your support is extremely critical to encourage members of Congress to support the Doctornaut Act. I urge you to send the letter below (or, if you prefer, your personal one) to Dr. Bill Frist at http://frist.senate.gov as well as to your state's local US Senators and Congressional Representatives. You can access the name and contact information of your local informationrepresentatives from the home page of our FIM website or go directly to either http://www.congress.org or http://www.senate.gov
This is a unique and narrow window of opportunity that must not be lost, not only for your children but also for others. To repeat, your help is needed to make the Doctornaut Act a reality. In fact, I believe you can be the most important positive force to make it happen.
And finally, don't forget to tell your friends and others to join in this once in a lifetime opportunity in the fight against disabilities and disease by sending their emails to Dr. Frist and their local representatives.
Yours truly,
Stephen L. DeFelice M.D.
For your information, the following are some concerned advocates
George Bouthilet, Ph.D.
Research Director
Presidentís Commission for People with Intellectual Disabilities
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/pcpid/index.html
Paul T. Burke
President
National Childhood Cancer Foundation
http://www.nccf.org
Eric Joice
Executive Director
The Epilepsy Foundation of N.J.
http://www.efnj.com
Richard Kahn, Ph.D.
Chief Scientific and Medical Officer
American Diabetes Association
http://www.diabetes.org
D. Ted Lewers, M.D.
Chairman of the Board
Medical Mutual Liability Insurance Society of Maryland
Past Chair, Board of Trustees
American Medical Association
http://www.ama-assn.org
Philip B. May, Jr., M.D.
President and CEO
American Academy of Developmental Medicine and Dentistry
http://www.aadmd.org
Maureen Mitchell
Family Voices of Virginia
http://www.familyvoices.org
John Salamone
Executive Director and Chief Administrative Officer
The National Italian American Foundation
http://www.niaf.org
George E. Schreiner, M.D.
Distinguished Professor of Medicine
Georgetown University School of Medicine
Joseph M. Valenzano, Jr.
CEO and Publisher
EP Global Communications
http://www.eparent.com
Julie Yannes
Chair
Child Neurology Foundation Advocacy Committee
http://www.childneurologyfoundation.org
(Copy and paste the following text into the message window and fill in the requested address information that can be found at http://frist.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=AboutSenatorFrist.ContactForm)
The letter to Senator Frist, M.D.
Dear Dr. Frist:
I (we) have received a very important message from Stephen L. DeFelice, M.D., the Chairman of FIM, the Foundation for Innovation in Medicine. It deals with the critical importance of Doctornauts in speeding up the medical availability of effective new medical therapies both for adults and our children.
I (we) am a very much concerned parent of a child with (disability or disease) and urge you to vigorously pursue the effort to have the Congress enact the Doctornaut Act. Dr. DeFelice has informed us of your welcomed goal to speed up the availability of new medical therapies, "From the bench of laboratory scientists to the bedside of patients."
We enthusiastically agree with your message and once more urge you to move forward with the Doctornaut Act.