Oklahoma Congressman Tom Cole is a dedicated leader in the fight in Washington D.C. for sustained increases in federal funding for biomedical research through the National Institutes of Health. U.S. Rep. Cole, Chairman of the House Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee, speaks candidly to Amazing Things about the promise of medical innovation, the scourge of disease and the critical importance of America's investment in biomedical research.

Hear the story of the first gene therapy approved in the United States to target a disease caused by mutations in a specific gene. In this case, the RPE65 gene, which affects vision. For Dr. Jean Bennett, the physician scientist behind this medical breakthrough, being able to change the prognosis for people who are blind or losing their vision — and to see the profound impact that this has on their life — has been a career well spent.

The statistics on Alzheimer’s disease are daunting. More than ve million Americans are living with the disease and by 2050 this number could be as high as 16 million. Alzheimer’s is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, but the only disease among the top ten killers that cannot be prevented, slowed or cured.

More than 350,000 people each year will experience an out of hospital cardiac arrest, and Dr. Natalia Trayanova's team is using cutting-edge science to make sure more people survive.

 While transplant of a human kidney is the best treatment for kidney failure, there simply aren’t enough donor kidneys to go around.

What if you could detect cancer at its earliest stages – before there are any symptoms that would send you to a doctor? 

Thousands of diseases are rooted in our genes, occurring when something goes wrong during cell multiplication and causes a mutation in the gene’s DNA sequence.

For the 1.25 million American adults and children with type 1 diabetes, managing blood-sugar levels is a 24/7 affair.