Copyright 1999 Federal Document Clearing House, Inc.
Federal Document Clearing House Congressional Testimony
April 15, 1999
SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY
LENGTH: 1067 words
HEADLINE:
TESTIMONY April 15, 1999 MICHAEL D. MAVES HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS
LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION LABOR,HEALTH,HUMAN SERVICES AND
EDUCATION
BODY:
Testimony of Michael D. Maves, MD,
MBA Executive Vice President American Academy of Otolaryngology Head and Neck
Surgery Before the House Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Labor,
Health and Human Services and Education Thursday, April 15, 1999 10:00 a.m. Good
morning ladies and gentlemen, Chairman Porter and members of the subcommittee, I
am Dr. Michael Maves, Executive Vice President of the American Academy of
Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery (AAO-HNS). I am here this morning on behalf
of more than 12,000 members urging your continued generous support for funding
for the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute on Deafness and
other Communication Disorders. As you may know, otolaryngologists or ENT
physicians as we are more commonly known, are responsible for treating patients
with disorders of the ears, nose, throat and related structures of the head and
neck. I would like to begin by thanking you Mr. Chairman, and all the members of
your subcommittee for your leadership in securing a 15% increase for the
National Institutes of Health in the budget agreement passed by Congress last
year. It is largely through the efforts of this subcommittee that our goal of
doubling funding for the National Institutes of Health over the next five years
will be realized. This morning, I would like to focus my remarks on the
remarkable success to date of the National Institute on Deafness and Other
Communication Disorders. As Members of Congress, each of you is singularly aware
of the importance of communication: it is how you present yourselves and your
beliefs to the world; how you listen to your constituents and debate
legislation. We live in a society driven by communication and disorders of those
processes present very real social and professional barriers. As Ruth Hubbard, a
prominent American biologist observed, "Without words to objectify and
categorize our sensations and place them in relation to one another, we cannot
evolve a tradition of what is real in the world. " Since its inception in 1988,
NIDCD has made great progress toward realizing its unique mission of
understanding the normal and disordered processes of hearing, balance, taste,
smell, voice, speech, and language. The NIDCD has supported researchers who are
devoting their careers to finding the causes, cure, and prevention of such
disorders, which collectively affect more Americans than cancer, heart disease,
orthopedic disorders, or visual problems. Communication disorders never killed
anyone -- but think of the lives it has touched! As in politics, much of the
work that we do today will go toward benefiting our country's most important
assets, our children. While a small part of the funding that this subcommittee
provides to NIDCD each year goes to helping today's patients through clinical
research, we are struggling to find new, more effective ways to treat the
diseases that cause these disorders -- and someday, to prevent them altogether.
A growing public demand for evidence-based treatment options intensifies our
conviction that more patient-oriented clinical research must be supported.
Presently, however, there is a severe shortage of adequately trained clinical
investigators within otolaryngology-head and neck surgery. This shortage of
investigators inhibits clinical research productivity and slows the rate at
which results available from the nation's thriving basic biomedical research
efforts find application to the problems of patients served by otolaryngologists
and our colleagues in other medical specialties and the communication sciences.
Mr. Porter, I urge you and members of your Subcommittee to examine this issue
seriously. As we enter into the new millennium, I often hear of all the concern
over the potential problems of Y2k and how our information infrastructure will
be ravaged by the turn of the century. Immense intellectual and financial
resources have been brought to bear on preserving the communication systems we
all enjoy and rely on today. While I am confident the Y2k problems will not be
as serious as projected and our information highway will continue to thrive, I
am fearful that many of our children with hearing or communication disorders
will not realize their full human potential in the new millennium. We have the
intellectual resources to address these problems -- but adequate financial
resources must be put into place to achieve our goals. At the beginning of the
20th century our country created an industrial wave that allowed us to become
one of the richest opportunistic countries in the world. The physical
capabilities of the men and women that created the infrastructure to produce
goods and services allowed us to be a world leader and maintain a healthy
economy throughout the 20th century. Now, and into the 21st century, our economy
will be heavily dependent upon an individual's ability to communicate. Aside
from education, without the fundamental communication skills our country's
workforce will be seriously hampered throughout the next one hundred years.
Among the most exciting advances the NlDCD has made include understanding the
genetic basis for hearing loss and finding ways to alleviate some of the causes.
Research on methods of assessing hearing in an infant on the day she is born
will make implementation of Congressman Jim Walsh's Newborn Infant
Hearing Screening and Intervention bill possible. Collaborative efforts
with other agencies result in greater safety and comfort for our astronauts in
space, and bring digital technology to creating a new generation of hearing
instruments. NIDCD-supported research has enriched our basic understanding of
the human voice, and resulted in new surgical procedures to restore voice to
those who once could speak only in a whisper. Although the NIDCD is among the
youngest of NIH's institutes, it has made tremendous progress in understanding
and improving communication for millions of people. I am here today to urge your
support of another 15% increase to NIH, and an even larger increase to the NlDCD
to expand support for patient-oriented clinical research by
physician-scientists. We hope you will seriously consider increasing the budget
of the NlDCD to levels appropriate for the magnitude and impact of communication
disorders in our society. Thank you and I will be happy to answer any questions
you may have.
LOAD-DATE: April 21, 1999
