Gore pledges war on cancer, Medicare for gene screenings

ATLANTA - Al Gore crawled on the floor with a toddler and spoke of the anguish of watching his own son near death as he commiserated Thursday with cancer patients and promised to lead a war on the disease.

The Democratic presidential candidate also offered a proposal to speed Medicare coverage of preventive screenings that the human genome research project promises. And he called for measures to keep medical records private and to ban employment and health insurance discrimination against workers who find through genetic testing that they are predisposed to disease.

''I pledge this from my heart: If I am entrusted with the presidency, I will work with you to put the same energy and priority into fighting cancer that we would put into preventing a war that could take 500,000 American lives every year,'' Gore said.

''We can win this war. I want to lead this war and create a victory.''

The vice president was accompanied by Frank Hunger, the widower of his older sister, Nancy, who died of lung cancer in 1984.

Aides trying to showcase Gore's less-formal side had billed his address on the steps of Emory University Medical Center as a personalized statement about the ravages of cancer.

But Gore only obliquely alluded to his sister Nancy's struggle, saying, ''I know from my own family's experience what cancer can do to a family.''

In the playroom of a children's cancer center across the street, Gore lunged onto his hands and knees to chase Ian MacKay, 2, who suffers from hemophilia, under a table.

Hooked to an IV and cradled in her mother's lap, MacKenzie Dyer shrunk from the commotion of the vice presidential entourage. ''Things will quiet down in a bit,'' Gore assured the 4-year-old girl.

A pediatrician recalled hearing Gore speak several years ago about his son, Albert III, then 6, battling back from near-fatal injuries after being hit by a car. ''When you've been through an experience like that, you have a bond with others who've been through it and realize what people are feeling,'' Gore said.

While in Georgia, Gore reached out to other states important to his electoral strategy, spending an hour on satellite interviews with TV stations in Florida, New York, Wisconsin, Ohio, New Mexico, Missouri and Iowa.

He also addressed a conference of foreign news correspondents in Atlanta for CNN's 20th anniversary celebrations. Jordan's King Abdullah, another guest speaker at the CNN conference, also met briefly with Gore at the Atlanta airport. Gore announced that Jordan would be joining a Clinton administration initiative to expand Internet access overseas.

On his Medicare proposal, Gore noted that scientists on the human genome project are expected, within the next few years, to identify genes involved in causing cancer.

Gore proposed a ''fast track'' process for congressional approval of Medicare coverage for preventive screenings and treatments as they are developed. A panel of scientists would make recommendations on new techniques - based on effectiveness and cost - and Congress would have 60 days to vote yes or no on each recommendation for a new Medicare benefit.

He also said he would expand a breast- and cervical-cancer screening program by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to include colorectal testing, and would propose Medicaid coverage for low-income men and women in the program who test positive for these cancers.

In a campaign speech last year, Gore pledged to double the federal government's five-year spending on cancer research to $9 billion.

Republicans, unimpressed with his appearance Thursday, circulated to reporters an excerpt from Gore's 1992 environmental book, ''Earth in the Balance.''

Gore wrote that the Pacific yew tree's taxol ''offers some promise of curing certain forms of lung, breast, and ovarian cancer in patients who would otherwise quickly die.''

''It seems an easy choice - sacrifice the tree for a human life - until one learns that three trees must be destroyed for each patient treated ... and that there are very few of these yews remaining on earth,'' Gore concluded.