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Posted on Tuesday, Jan 17, 2012

Congress Allocates Millions to Mesothelioma Research

The Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation announced this week that congress passed the Department of Defense (DoD) Appropriations bill and kept mesothelioma-eligible funding for 2012.  The Foundation is one of the largest organizations to advocate for mesothelioma patients, and it attributes its advocacy efforts to the available DoD funding. 

The funding is available as part of the DoD’s Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Program (PRCRP). The DoD Appropriations Act, which passed in late December, allocated $12.8 million for distribution among eligible diseases through the PRCRP, according to the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation. 

The DoD is responsible for funding and promoting research on diseases related to military service. Veterans account for nearly 30 percent of all cases of mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lung or abdomen, caused by exposure to asbestos.  Former military troops have a higher risk of contracting asbestos-related diseases because of the wide use of asbestos in thousands of buildings and Navy ships from World War II until the 1970s.  Treatment for the incurable disease is primarily palliative. 

The PRCRP grants are offered with a goal to improve quality of life by decreasing the impact of cancer on service members, their families, and the American public. The DoD hopes to encourage work in “groundbreaking, cutting-edge research for the prevention, detection, and treatment of cancer.” 

“We have been working at full speed to accelerate treatment discoveries, which are urgently needed by mesothelioma patients.  DoD funding is critically important to ignite research interest in mesothelioma,” said Meso Foundation’s executive director, Kathy Wiedemer.