82 My Time on Capitol Hill - April 2010

April 26, 2010

A week ago today I was in Washington, D.C.  It was a fantastic experience!

It started last year when someone from the Pew Charitable Trusts noticed this blog and contacted me.  They have joined with four other non-profit organizations to create an alliance that drafted legislation.  They scheduled a lobbying campaign with volunteers like me, and earlier this year invited me to join them.  Thrilled to be included, I accepted the invitation.

The bill was introduced to the House just three weeks ago.  It's H.R. 4959.  The link takes you to a web page that summarizes the bill and gives you an easy way to pull it up in a PDF file.  Scroll to the bottom of the page to see the summary of what the bill is about.

The job of the volunteers was to schedule time with their state lawmakers to discuss the bill and why it's worth supporting.  We told our stories about having had diseases that were cured or controlled by medication derived from nature.  An employee of one of the non-profits was with us to directly address the contents of the bill.  It felt like a job interview almost, with being very conscious of the passage of precious time and dressing formally and professionally.  There was polite small talk and hand shaking upon greeting and leaving, and yet it was thrilling to walk through the halls of buildings where this country's laws are pondered, discussed, debated, trashed and supported by our elected officials.

I loved it that Pew agreed with my recommendation that my friend Amy Huff should come along.  Like me, she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006.  Like me, she was diagnosed while pregnant.  Like me, Amy had Taxol as part of her chemotherapy treatments.  Like me, her story makes for a compelling reason why we should protect those wild places around our planet that could lead to future discoveries of life-saving medications.  We mothers want to stay alive and watch our children grow up!

Sidebar:  Like me, Amy has earned an accounting degree, only Amy still enjoys work as an accountant and I hate doing pure accounting work. That's why I'm a data analyst instead.  If you're in the Austin metropolitan area with a small business and you need an accountant for payroll, bookkeeping, taxes and other business needs, you can't go wrong with her.  My friend is an incredible lady.  The year she chaired Graphic, the main fundraiser for the Pink Ribbon Cowgirls, the event more than doubled what was collected the year before.  She bakes cookies that are delivered to people in treatment, and involves her children in her philanthropic pursuits so that they learn the importance of helping others in need.

This is Amy Huff with David Hahn, a Hodgkin's lymphoma survivor from New York who is a pianist and a fellow volunteer at the event.  Being coffee addicts, naturally we're having breakfast at Starbucks.

For me, it was a scary thing to e-mail the schedulers of my state's Senate and House representatives and ask for someone to meet with me.  I thought about what I've learned after cancer, and how much stronger I've become.  I thought about how much better I am at facing my fears so I wrote those inquiries and delighted in each response.

What is this bill about?  There is a web site that eloquently describes the problems, why it matters, and what to do about it.  Rather than try to rewrite all of that information in my blog I'm going to put a link to their home page.

What I find compelling is that half of the prescription drugs used in the United States and one quarter of all prescription medications worldwide were derived from some element of nature.  At the current rate of extinction, we'll lose one important new future medication every two years.  "More than 70 percent of cancer medications are based on natural sources," the web site tells us.  Want a list?  Here it is.

I got to speak members of the staff of my two state senators, Kay Bailey Hutchinson and John Cornyn.  I felt amused and also proud to see a flag from the State of Texas on display at the end of the hallway where her office is located.  While we waited for an audience, I acted like a silly tourist and insited on taking pictures and having pictures taken.  Here is a picture of me in the waiting room of Kay Bailey Hutchinson's office. 

When we met with the actual staffers, though, I was relaxed and to the point.  Our person from the World Wildlife Federation explained that the bill proposes to task an existing Capitol Hill employee with coordinating the efforts of the six agencies that already touch upon and overlap one another with global conservation efforts.  The bill actually asks for no funding at this time.

We spoke about how important plants and animals are to life-saving medication, how it is estimated that one major medication will be lost every two years if the current rate of environmental destruction continues, and how our personal experiences with Taxol lead us to be especially sympathetic with our desire to save our planet.  What we didn't have time to mention was that 75% of the world's plant and animal diversity lies within the undeveloped countries who have no laws or weak enforcement of laws against things like rainforest destruction, illegal logging, coral reef destruction, over fishing, and so on.  We also didn't have time to mention that this conservation effort would mean a continuation of things our country is already doing, such as training people in countries whose populations don't even average a high school education how to be good guardians of the land and how to live more in harmony with the planet.  We teach them better agricultural practices and they stop burning down forests.

Our first night as a group, all the volunteers met with the people from Pew as well as representatives from the other non-profit groups for dinner.  I sat next to a gentleman who has been in one of the groups, I forget which one, for the last ten years.  I asked if he is optimistic or pessimistic about the changes he's seen.  He said he feels pessimistic these days.  His work has been in South America.  Over the last ten years, most of the forty million acres his group has set out to protect from deforestation has remained protected, but over twice that amount in other areas has been destroyed.  It grieved my heart to hear that.

At a D.C. Starbucks shop, conveniently located a mere two blocks away from the hotel, I noticed a sign that claimed Starbucks partners with Conservation International.  I got to speak with a man who works for Conservation International and he backed up that claim, telling me that Starbucks has focused on finding and supporting coffee growers who use sustainable farming techniques.  And he added that Disney has partnered withi Conservation International to help the cause, too, though their area of assistance was different.

This neat looking sculpture is an Alexander Calder piece named Mountains and Clouds.  It is in the building where Senator John Cornyn's office is located.  That's the same office of Tom Udall from New Mexico, the champion of the bill in the Senate.

To my delight, I got to meet Representative Lloyd Doggett, who was every bit as nice in person as he is rumored to be.  I spoke with his staff member first, but had a bit of luck as Mr. Doggett was returning from another meeting and wanted to meet me in person before I left.  Another staff member took our picture together with the Capitol in the background.  They mailed me a print and I'm planning to frame it.

While the staffers and I were standing outside the building after Mr. Doggett had left, we were talking about cancer.  The one woman mentioned that her mother is a breast cancer survivor.  I was glad to hear that her mother is doing fine.  She's glad to hear that I'm doing fine at four years and counting.  I told her about Shannon Iezzi Watson, though, our Pink Ribbon Cowgirl member who was not doing fine.  This conversation was on a Tuesday.  Shannon passed away from breast cancer the Friday before, in the arms of her husband.  She was only 29.  We agreed that cancer is a beast of a disease and needs to be erradicated.

Update from May 2010:  Lloyd Doggett is supporting the Global Conservation Act of 2010.  Hooray!

My trip to D.C. wasn't all work and no play, however.  Amy and I had plenty of time to hang around museums and the lovely Botanic Gardens.  Here are some of the photos from that fun time.

Amy

a powderpuff tree

orchids

 a really interesting cactus of some sort

 

 

It turns out that the Botanic Gardens have a yew tree and signage telling the story of the Pacific yew tree (from which Taxol is now synthetically derived).

Amy and I got to meet Dr. Susan Horwitz.  She and her team figured out how to leverage Taxol into a cancer-killing drug.  The picture is a little blurry (thanks, Amy) but that's me with Dr. Horwitz.  It was an honor to meet her, and I told her so.

I felt amusement when I was in one of the buildings where our some members of the House of Representatives work and I saw fancy trashcans labeled for recycling.  First I was impressed to see recycling in a federal building.  Way to go green, U.S. government!  Second, I was impressed at how pretty the trash cans were.  The people around me were amused at how I scrambled to get my camera out to take a picture before the elevator arrived.  I needn't have rushed.  The elevator took a while.  The building was pretty and stately, but it's old.

I figure if I'm going to post a picture of trashcans, I ought to follow it up with another picture of flowers. 

So there was my first trip to Washington, D.C.  By the time I came home I was extremely happy to be with my husband and son again.  Kelric spent the week telling everyone at school that his mommy was in "Washington AC" saving the plants.

Thank you, Pew, for including me in your lobbying event.  Thanks to my friend Margery who picked me up from the airport and played host to my tourist for the first day and a half that I was there.  You are awesome.  Thanks Amy for being such a fun person to hang around with in an unfamiliar city.  Thanks Guy and Kelric for letting me go!  :-)

Angela

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