Proclamation 5542 --
American Liver Foundation National Liver Awareness Month, 1986
October 8, 1986
By
the President of the United States of
America
A
Proclamation
Liver
diseases claim 50,000 lives in the United States each year and are the
fourth leading cause of death of Americans between the ages of 15 and 65. There
are more than 100 liver disorders. Some of these are progressively debilitating
and often fatal. Liver diseases strike infants, children, adolescents, and
adults, regardless of sex, race, or economic status. Unfortunately, people with
liver disease suffer not only physically from the disease, but also emotionally
from the unjust stigma placed on them by the common, but mistaken, notion that
liver disease is caused only by alcoholism.
Through
the American Liver Foundation, a network of volunteers, families, researchers,
and health care professionals throughout the United States has dedicated itself to
funding and increasing research to find the causes, treatments, cures, and ways
to prevent these devastating diseases. The American Liver Foundation, the only
national organization to focus on all types of liver disease, is committed to
promoting the health of all Americans by increasing public awareness of all
conditions that can lead to liver disease and by supporting and enhancing the
quality of life for those individuals and their families who must cope with a
liver disease.
The
Congress, by Senate Joint Resolution 202, has designated the month of October
1986 as ``American Liver Foundation National Liver Awareness Month'' and
authorized and requested the President to issue a proclamation in observance of
this occasion.
Now,
Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of
America, do hereby proclaim the month of October 1986
as American Liver Foundation National Liver Awareness Month. I urge the people
of the United States and educational,
philanthropic, scientific, medical, and health care organizations and
professionals to learn more about the liver, to support appropriate efforts to
discover the causes and cures of all types of liver disease, and to aid those
who suffer from the crushing physical, psychological, and financial burden of a
liver disease.
In
Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this eighth day of October, in the
year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-six, and of the Independence of the United States of
America the two hundred and
eleventh.
Ronald
Reagan
[Filed
with the Office of the Federal Register, 12:06 p.m., October
9, 1986]