Ian Huyett’s Remarks Presenting the William Wilberforce Award to Rep. Lisa Mazur
Before presenting our annual William Wilberforce Award for Statesmanship to Representative Lisa Mazur, representing Goffstown and Weare, I want to tell you how churches across New Hampshire, under her leadership, have promoted biotechnology innovation in our state. But first, I want to tell you why Christians fought for this issue.
Christians believe that God became man and introduced Himself to the nations first through a ministry of healing miracles: making the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk; cleansing the lepers, raising a paralytic, healing a cripple, and restoring a man’s withered and deformed hand to the fullness of life—even when the Pharisees told him it was illegal to do so.
Christ did not teach us, as a few people imagine today, that healing is to be done unilaterally by God alone, or that we are here to passively accept the sickness and suffering in the world and pray. Instead, Christ, when He was about to heal a man born blind, told His disciples, “This man was born blind that the works of God might be made manifest in him. We must work the works of Him who sent me.” In the same way, Christ told us, “What you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me.” For this reason, Christians invented the first hospitals and drove the advancement of medicine and the sciences throughout history.
Today, we stand on the precipice of a revolution in regenerative biotechnology. But that revolution is obstructed by a wall of legal and regulatory obstacles that make promising but experimental treatments inaccessible to most people.
While raw technology is rapidly and radically progressing, the cost of getting one new treatment approved has doubled every ten years as the wall of regulatory and liability costs rises higher and higher.
On the outside of that wall are suffering patients and their families. At Cornerstone, we’ve spoken with many of them across the country: a wife fighting for unapproved immunotherapy for her dying husband; parents of children with genetic illnesses who have no accessible path to individualized gene therapy. Like the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath, the authorities say, in effect, that it is not lawful to heal them.
But there is hope. While the states did not cause this problem, our federal system of government gives the states a range of tools that they can use to open alternative pathways for innovation and treatment—many still untried. Only a few states, including Montana and Florida, have begun to create meaningful state pathways to foster experimental treatment.
A year ago, Representative Lisa Mazur set out to rally New Hampshire to lead the way. In August, Governor Ayotte signed Mazur’s revolutionary Right-to-Try expansion into law. Today, New Hampshire has the best legal regime in the United States for access to experimental treatments for people with life-threatening illnesses.
Representative Mazur herself was one of the best sponsors we have ever worked with. She was a passionate voice for the vulnerable and suffering, and she demonstrated true statesmanship in persuading her colleagues of the need for reform. Together, we fought against a relentless, multimillion-dollar trade association—and she remained tireless and unyielding. Representative Mazur embodies all the virtues of this award’s namesake, William Wilberforce.
Representative Mazur has not just passed a bill—she has lit a spark. Consider the providential position New Hampshire now occupies. Boston is the largest biotechnology hub in the world, and New Hampshire—just miles away—is among the most legally innovative jurisdictions in the nation. I firmly believe, as surely as I believe anything, that God has chosen New Hampshire to become a hub of healing—unlocking innovation and growth here at home, and saving and transforming lives across our state and our country.
God has sown this future for us through the revolutionary work of Representative Lisa Mazur. We are honored to honor her with the annual William Wilberforce Award. Please join me in warmly thanking this inspiring warrior of God, Representative Lisa Mazur of Goffstown.
Rep. Lisa Mazur and Ian Huyett with the William Wilberforce Award.