National Neurotechnology Initiative

Zack Lynch asks for sup­port to Write Con­gress Today in Sup­port of the Nation­al Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Ini­tia­tive Act, explain­ing:

“With the recent intro­duc­tion of the Nation­al Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Ini­tia­tive (NNTI) Act in the House (H.R. 5989) and the Sen­ate (S.2989) ear­li­er this month, the time has come to ramp up a nation­al grass­roots cam­paign in sup­port of the NNTI and I would like to ask for your help. It is imper­a­tive that we get a sub­stan­tive amount of Con­gres­sion­al sup­port as quick­ly as pos­si­ble as we are tar­get­ing Con­gres­sion­al hear­ings pri­or to the August break.

Take action: We need to flood Con­gres­sion­al fax machines and mail box­es with indi­vid­ual let­ters of sup­port from key con­stituents like you over the next four weeks. I urge you to vis­it NIO’s Take Action web­page.

Here you can down­load sam­ple let­ters to cus­tomize and send. Full instruc­tions appear on that web­page, as well as a link to help access your rep­re­sen­ta­tives’ con­tact infor­ma­tion and fax numbers.

Spread the word: Because of lim­it­ed resources and an aggres­sive leg­isla­tive sched­ule, it is absolute­ly vital that we build a net­work of sup­port for this bill. Please for­ward this appeal along with a per­son­al note of sup­port to your net­work of con­tacts and ask that they express their sup­port to Con­gress and share with their net­works as well. Please for­ward onto co-work­ers, board mem­bers, researchers, clin­i­cians, nurs­es, patients, advo­ca­cy groups, friends, fam­i­ly, any­one with a stake in ele­vat­ing ther­a­pies and cures for brain relat­ed illnesses.

We need your help — and ten min­utes of your time — to secure Con­gres­sion­al sup­port for new­ly intro­duced leg­is­la­tion designed to dra­mat­i­cal­ly accel­er­ate new treat­ments for brain and ner­vous sys­tem injuries and ill­ness­es. This leg­is­la­tion stands to sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve the lives of more than 100 mil­lion Amer­i­cans. Take 10 min­utes to pro­tect your future brain.”

You can think of it as great brain exer­cise: if you had your Con­gressper­son and Sen­a­tor in front of you right now, what one appli­ca­tion of brain research would you ask them to sup­port? and how would you mea­sure the impact of any addi­tion­al research dollars?.

Once you have thought about that, why not actu­al­ly let them know what you think?