Cancer Patients Scold Boxer for Undermining Cancer Research.

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 22, 1998--Senator Barbara Boxer's opposition to construction of California's low-level radioactive waste disposal facility is already hurting cancer patients and has the potential for delaying a cure for cancer by many years, perhaps decades, according to a statement released by the National Association of Cancer Patients today.

The group was responding to Boxer's latest TV ad which attacks her challenger, Matt Fong, for supporting the construction of a secure LLRW disposal facility in Ward Valley, located in a remote part of California's Mojave Desert.

"Every single day, cancer patients all over California benefit from the uses of radioisotopes in medicine and research," said NACP President Daniel Negroni, himself a cancer survivor. "These life-extending, pain-relieving procedures are our weapons in the battle against cancer. Senator Boxer's politically-motivated attacks on the Ward Valley facility have already resulted in a slow-down of research to find a cure for cancer and are making it more difficult to obtain radiation-based therapies used for many years. And that hurts today's cancer patients -- and everyone who will be diagnosed with cancer in the future."

The disposal project, approved by the California Department of Health Services in 1993 after a lengthy technical review, was given a clean bill of health by the nation's most prestigious scientific body, the National Academy of Sciences, Negroni said. The Academy's study was chaired by renowned Stanford University geophysicist Dr. George Thompson.

"Senator Boxer should listen to the scientific experts and stop hurting cancer patients," Negroni urged.

The National Association of Cancer Patients is a not-for-profit grassroots advocacy group organized under Chapter 501(c)4 of the IRS code and committed to speaking out on public policy issues on behalf of cancer patients.