For Members of Congress:
It’s Childhood Cancer Awareness Month! You have the power to speed a cure for the deadliest cancer known to mankind that affects our nation’s children!
- Join the already over-200 cosponsors to create a solid majority on the DIPG Awareness Resolution(H. Res. 404)–an unprecedented show of support, and an important gesture of UNITY for our America’s children with cancer.
H. Res. 404 Press Summary: bit.ly/hres404-summary | Letter with Resolution text: bit.ly/hres404-congress
Did You Know…
–Cancer is the #1 disease-related cause of death in children, pediatric brain cancer leads in childhood cancer incidence and is #1 in childhood cancer deaths?
—that DIPG is responsible for the majority of childhood brain cancer deaths, and on its own represents a significant portion of the annual childhood cancer death toll in the United States?
–And that there’s been no change in the standard treatment protocol for DIPG, nor its prognosis, since Neil Armstrong’s daughter died of it in 1962?
–that children with cancer have been systematically, no matter how unintentionally, left behind for research into cures?
THE DIPG AWARENESS RESOLUTION is our “Moonshot4Kids”, first introduced on January 13, 2016. It was inspired by the attitudes and norms around medical research investment and its resultant effects, historically, on our nation’s children and their families. In real-time, parents are expected to witness, in complete helplessness, the tragic deaths of their children with DIPG because, “the numbers aren’t great enough for investors,” in the wealthiest country in the world.
If we addressed childhood cancer with the same urgency as the original Moonshot to beat the Russians, but to save our children, we’d have a cure for DIPG within 2 years! Look how quickly we got a vaccine for Covid. DIPG’s been a death sentence for over 60 years, and most people have no idea. The last 15 years of investment by bereaved parents has us on the threshold of a cure. “If only more people were aware…and joined us in this fight.” * 2600 more children have died from DIPG alone since the resolution was first introduced in 2016.
You have the POWER that we parents do not, to draw attention to this issue! Help us make history for childhood cancer, and join the over 200 cosponsors to set a precedent of acknowledgement and caring for children with cancer that only a bold statement of UNITY by Congress can do, for this voiceless population!
Quite simply: The purpose of the resolution is to alert, educate, and inspire greater action from all sectors of society, to expedite effective therapies for America’s children.
As such, the resolution (H. Res. 404) uses DIPG as an Ambassador for Childhood Cancer, consequential to:
- Increasing awareness in Congress, and consequently for the American Public of the general lack of adequate investment into childhood cancer research using the powerful example of DIPG, diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma;
- Expediting consideration for the passage of, and approval of allocations for, related policy/legislation to close the gaps in the system for childhood cancer research;
- Drawing attention to DIPG and pediatric brain cancer specifically, the leading cause of cancer-related death in children, to expedite a needed cure for this death sentence.
For power and immediate impact, the DIPG Awareness Day has been kept in the language of the resolution. H. Res. 404 would be the 1st such resolution to pass since the Patriot’s Day resolution in 2016. So-called “commemorative” resolutions were restricted in the 1990s due to excessive overuse at the time, to conserve valuable floor-time in the People’s House of Representatives. Due to the urgency and the lack of awareness of the reality of childhood cancer, H. Res. 404 merits this consideration.
It meets the standards of the exception protocol for suspension of rules: “A resolution of bereavement, or condemnation, or which calls on others to take a particular action, is eligible to be scheduled for consideration.” **
To be added, please contact:
Meg Makarewicz at Congresswoman Dingell’s office, D-MI-12, (#4071), Will Mascaro at Congressman Joyce’s office (#5731), R-OH-14, both standard house email.
*Dr. Michelle Monje (Stanford University), May 17, 2022 and Feb. 13, 2020 Moonshot4Kids Congressional Briefiing, Rayburn HOB, Washington DC
** Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s website, https://www.majorityleader.gov/content/117th-congress-legislative-protocols
