Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

Last December, Sen. John McCain identified Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) as an illness unworthy of receiving funds for research, citing an earmarked $665,000 for the Cedar Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, for equipment and supplies to research the debilitating condition. This triggered the Gastroparesis Patient Association for Cures and Treatment (G-PACT), an organization that raises awareness of gastric mobility disorders, to write a petition to present to Sen. McCain on March 8, 2010. The petition stresses that the money is used to assist in the “funding innovating GI motility research by Cedars Sinai to study the use of various antibiotics to enhance GI mobility and prevent severe bacterial overgrowth in various GI motility disease,” usage deemed worthy by many who suffer from GI disorders.

Such research could help the approximately 5 million people who suffer from gastric mobility disorders such as gastroparesis and chronic intestinal pseudo-obtruction. People with these conditions “suffer from the debilitating effects of chronic nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, malnutrition, dehydration, and weight loss. Many cannot eat a bite of food or take a sip of fluid without getting sick. Some patients are disabled and completely homebound, relying on artificial nutrition in order to stay alive,” according to G-PACT.

Treatments for these conditions are mostly limited to medications, like Reglan (metoclopramide), which cannot be used on a long-term basis without putting users at risk for serious side effects.

“Having been a skin cancer
 sufferer, we would expect Mr. McCain to have a better understanding of
 the struggle that chronic disease sufferers have to live a normal life,
 maintaining careers, families and health,” the petition states. “We also implore others in public life to work to help in our fight to 
gain further understanding, awareness and most importantly cures of GI 
motility disease that all too often causes pain and starvation to 
individuals who did not seek such illness and who did not choose this
 fight.”

To join this fight, sign the petition.

Source, About.com

Related posts:

• Organization raises awareness, funding for GI motility disorders
• August is Gastroparesis Awareness Month
• Women more likely than men to suffer from gastroparesis
• Diet, nutrition key for people with gastroparesis
• Scleroderma bill will raise awareness, fund research

This entry was posted on Monday, March 1st, 2010 at 12:13 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.