By Lisa Seachrist

Washington Editor

WASHINGTON - Taking a page from a 1960's NASA script, Sen. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) is putting a human face on the biotechnology industry in an attempt to capture the imagination of the average American.

Mack, chair of the Joint Economic Committee, is sponsoring a one-day Biotechnology Summit today to illustrate the profound effects the biotechnology industry has had on American's everyday lives. To make his point, the senator is highlighting the everyday person who has been touched by new medical technologies.

"I was trying to think of how do you break through the consciousness of the American people with respect to the sciences," Mack told BioWorld Today. "I think if we find ourselves just talking about numbers and tax policies and scientists, that only takes us so far. The thought occurred to me that NASA in the 1960s and 1970s took a very challenging, intricate, highly scientific technology-based program and made it human by focusing on the astronauts.

"I think if we're going to be successful in the long run with biomedical research we've got to focus on the cures. We've got to focus on the patients that have been cured."

In putting together the summit, Mack has assembled cancer survivor and Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong, breast cancer survivor Carolyn Boyer Fortier, kidney transplant recipient Erin Fagan and their physicians to highlight the vast number of diseases that now can be touched by biotechnology. In addition, the senator has invited president and CEO of Genzyme Corp., Henri Termeer; president and CEO of Genentech Inc., Arthur Levinson; and president and chief operating officer of Monsanto Co., Hendrick Verfaillie, among others, to highlight the progress biotech has made in medicine and agriculture.

Mutual fund master Peter Lynch, vice chairman of the Fidelity Management and Research Co., will kick off a panel focused on financing biomedical research. Joining Lynch will be Matt Andresen, president of Island ECN Inc., and M. Kathy Behrens, member of the board of directors for the National Venture Capital Association.

Mack's interest in biomedical research is personal. His family has been hit with cancer in many different forms. In 1982, Mack dedicated his first political campaign to his brother, Michael, who had died of melanoma. Mack himself had melanoma. His wife is a breast cancer survivor; his daughter is a cervical cancer survivor; his father died of esophageal cancer; and his mother had kidney cancer.

By 1988 the weight of his family's experiences with cancer compelled Mack to become focused on pursuing the fight on cancer, which, in turn, led him to a generalized interest in biomedical research. In 1994, he led a Republican Senate conference where he proposed doubling the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The eleventh bill passed by the Senate in 1995 was a resolution to double NIH's funding.

"What I see us doing by funding this research is creating knowledge," Mack said. "We are an entrepreneurial people. There are large numbers of people who are willing to take risks. At the same time we have huge capital markets that are relatively free and ready to flow to people with a new concept or new innovation."

In the end, Mack sees this as moving toward biomedical products that offer new, innovative cures for diseases.

"What we're trying to do with this summit is say that all this fancy stuff we're talking about changes the lives of everyday ordinary Americans for the better," Mack said.