Cancer-stricken children urge Bernie Sanders to back life-saving pediatric healthcare bill

Cancer-stricken patients are urging Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont., to reverse course and support a bill that could lead to life-saving treatments.

Jacob Knudsen, who was diagnosed with osteosarcoma when he was 12, and has since endured nearly two dozen surgeries and multiple rounds of chemotherapy after tumors were discovered on his organs, is pushing for Sanders to support the Mikaela Naylon Give Kids a Chance Act, the New York Post reported. 

"There is something currently in my lung, and there’s a 50-50 chance that it’s cancer," Knudsen, a California native and college student, told the newspaper. "I’m willing to bleed, I’m willing to lose limbs, I’m willing to lose organs, I’m willing to do anything just to survive."

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The bipartisan bill, named after Knudsen's friend, a fellow osteosarcoma patient who died late last year at 16, would allow pediatric cancer patients to participate in clinical trials and to ensure them access to key treatments.

The legislation passed unanimously in the House. However, when it reached the Senate, Sanders, who has repeatedly called for better health care, objected. He demanded other stipulations be attached, such as funding of other efforts, such as community health centers, the Post said. 

His opposition has slowed the bill's advancement. Fox News Digital has reached out to Sanders. 

At the time of the bill's failure, in December, Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Oklahoma., accused Sanders of playing politics with children's lives before calling him a real-life Grinch.

"Everything their senator from Vermont just talked about was political," said Mullin, who brought the bill to the Senate floor. "I'm talking about giving kids a chance to live an extra day or a lifetime. This has nothing to do with politics. This has to do with kids."

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"The Grinch is stealing kids' lives," he added. "And he's stealing hope from the families."

Sanders explained that he had no problem with the legislation, which would have incentivized the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and drug companies to encourage more relevant pediatric studies and invest in rare pediatric disease treatments, but that he wanted to tack on an amendment to fund community health centers throughout the country.

"This is not a radical amendment," Sanders said at the time. "I'm not coming here saying, ‘Let's do something we've not talked about.’ I'm not talking about passing Medicare for all here. I am talking about doing what the Republicans and Democrats agreed to a year ago but was torpedoed by some tweets from Elon Musk."

Nancy Goodman, executive director of Kids v Cancer, told the Post that the bill's failure to pass is an example of Washington's crippling dysfunction. 

"The bill would ensure the most innovative, promising pediatric cancer clinical studies are conducted, and it would incentivize companies to develop novel, potentially curative drugs for these kids," she said. "How can we say Congress is functioning if it can’t pass the easiest bill that one can ever imagine? This is a bill that has bipartisan support that saves the lives of children with cancer that costs taxpayers nothing, and yet they can’t pass it."

Goodman and her husband, former US Trade Representative Michael Froman, lost their 10-year-old son, Jacob, in 2009 to medulloblastoma.

Other cancer patients feel the same as Knudsen. 

"I would probably tell [politicians] to talk to someone [diagnosed with cancer], just to see what they’re going through," Anderson Coy, 21, told The Post.

"The sooner we pass acts like this, the more lives we save," Knudsen said. "How many children have died from cancer? How many of those were the next Albert Einstein that never made it? These kids could solve the world’s problems."