The 21st Century Cures Act had earlier passed through the committee on a 51-0 vote. Almost nothing except the most innocuous non-binding resolution gets unanimity in the sharply polarized Congress. But this bill is a substantive and substantial one, making the committee action truly notable. It happened because Chairman Upton and his Democratic partner on the bill, Colorado’s Diana DeGette, worked for months to find common ground, and did it the right way—through deliberation and give-and-take, and by bringing in other committee members, keeping them in the loop, and incorporating their ideas. And it happened because the substantive area—expediting research and development on debilitating diseases, and making it easier to get important treatments to the patients who need them—was a natural for bipartisan cooperation.

The Act does many things, including making research collaborations easier; promoting therapies like biomarkers to enhance personalized drug treatments, targeted at individuals and not just broadly at diseases; reforming and streamlining clinical trials and making it less challenging and expensive for companies to bring drugs to market; creating incentives for developing drugs for uncommon but deadly diseases; creating an Innovation Fund to encourage young scientists to do path-breaking research; and putting more money into both the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration to make these innovations work.

But getting to “yes” was not so easy. First, it required a bundle of money—at a time when federal dollars are particularly difficult to come by. Many Republicans do not want to expand government of any variety, and the zeitgeist is to slash more, not spend more. The Brat Amendment reflected that view, and would have cut the innovations in the Act off at the knees. Second, the Act tries to reduce the daunting costs of bringing promising treatments through the lengthy and difficult process of laboratory work, animal trials, and several phases of human clinical trials—something that is opposed by many people who fear that any shortcuts could be dangerous, and who do not want to do anything that might reward pharmaceutical companies. Thus, such luminaries as David Kessler, the former head of the FDA, opposed the bill.

I, on the other hand, rooted for it enthusiastically. First, any effort of this sort—serious and important legislation to improve the life and health of Americans—that tries and succeeds at finding that common ground through a model legislative process needs to be encouraged and applauded. Second, there are few more cost-effective ways to spend taxpayer dollars than on medical and scientific research. That approach is now more important than ever, when the cuts in research dollars and the assaults on federal agencies have taken away many of the incentives for young, brilliant scientists to go into medical research. Third, the need to enhance research in areas like Alzheimer’s is especially acute and urgent. Newt Gingrich has pointed out that if we do not make progress combatting the scourge of Alzheimer’s, the costs to the country as Baby Boomers age will be $20 trillion or more—which does not include the human costs, just the money to care for patients.