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By Times staff | Wednesday, July 11, 2007 |
Big promise
While campaigning Tuesday in Iowa, Republican presidential hopeful Tommy Thompson pledged to end breast cancer by 2015 if he wins the presidency.
“Three women in my family have been afflicted with cancer, including my daughter and my wife,” the former Wisconsin governor said in a news release.
“A healthy family starts with a healthy woman. I am committed to deploying the vast resources of the United States toward the goal of ending breast cancer by 2015, just like President Kennedy committed our nation to the moon,” he said.
Thompson, a former secretary of health and human services, wants to recruit a top corporate executive to lead a team of doctors, researchers, nurses and cancer victims that would set goals and make funding recommendations. He would establish $10 million prizes for successful research and double the budget for the National Institutes of Health from the current $28 billion to $56 billion.
Thompson also would recruit overseas governments, researchers and institutions to join in the anti-cancer effort and create what he calls an “open source research community” using the Internet.
Thompson made his proposal in the midst of a 100-stop bus tour of the state.
Food safety
Former North Carolina senator John Edwards called for expanded government actions to ensure the safety of the nation’s food supplies.
The Democratic presidential hopeful wants the immediate implementation of country-of-origin labeling on food products. Edwards said the labeling law was approved five years ago but enforcement has been delayed by special interest groups.
“Food safety is a very serious issue for America,” Edwards told reporters during a conference call. “It’s time, I believe, we stop giving in to big agribusiness and food importers and stop delays in laws that can provide for food safety.”
Labeling, Edwards said, is even more important now amid reports of contamination in imported food and pharmaceutical ingredients, particularly from China. Edwards said Americans eat more imported food than ever before — 260 pounds per-capita annually — but only a tiny fraction of that food is inspected.
Edwards also wants to overhaul a “jumble” of federal agencies overseeing food safety, increase food inspections, require other countries to step up inspections and give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration broader powers to keep unsafe food from reaching American consumers.
Vilsack’s generosity
Former governor Tom Vilsack is giving just about everything he has to help Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign — even his anecdotes.
During Vilsack’s brief campaign for the presidency, he ended many speeches by telling the story of Bruce Smith, a chief warrant officer in the Iowa Army National Guard from West Liberty, Iowa, who was killed in action in 2003.
On Tuesday, at a campaign event in Des Moines, Clinton told Smith’s story, saying she heard it from Vilsack.
She told about how Smith’s helicopter came under attack and how his actions as pilot helped save the lives of his passengers. His wife, Oliva Smith, later told Vilsack that the passengers needed her husband on that day more than she will need him the rest of her life.
Clinton closed her speech with this story.
“Bruce Smith made his choice. He chose to be there for his soldiers, the choice that so many of our brave men in uniform make for each other and for our country every single day,” she said.
Clinton said it’s time to honor the soldiers’ service by bringing them home from Iraq.
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