[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 70 (Tuesday, May 24, 2005)]
[House]
[Page H3773]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page H3773]]
                           STEM CELL RESEARCH

  (Mr. DeLAY asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, today on the floor of the House, we will 
momentarily suspend the annual spring appropriations debates to provide 
a vital and noble service to the American people. We will consider two 
bills that transcend both party and politics and oblige us to engage in 
a moral and metaphysical inquiry into the very nature of man.
  If it sounds a little more sobering and important than the regular 
goings on around here, well, we can only hope, Mr. Speaker.
  The first bill to be considered under suspension of the rules, and 
sponsored by the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), would, for the 
first time, direct Federal funding for research on the stem cells found 
in umbilical cords of newborn children.
  Well-developed cord-blood stem cells, unlike stem cells obtained via 
the destruction of human embryos, have proven valuable in the treatment 
of disease, 67 of them to be precise, including leukemia and sickle 
cell anemia. The Smith bill will direct funds for improved research and 
therapies using these proven cord-blood cells while expanding the 
existing Federal bone marrow stem cell research program as well. It 
will pass with bipartisan support because none of its provisions 
predicate its available funding upon the destruction of human life.
  Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, of the second bill on the calendar today, 
sponsored by the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), the same cannot 
be said. The Castle bill is both divisive and, to put it bluntly, 
dismissive of the dignity of human life at its embryonic stage. It has, 
therefore, incited loud, and in too many cases, harsh, advocacy on both 
sides of the debate.
  But even in the midst of vocal unrelenting support for and opposition 
to the Castle bill, we must recognize that this is one of those issues 
that has no easy answers. Proponents of the Castle bill, try as they 
might to find wiggle room, will vote to fund with taxpayer dollars the 
dismemberment of living distinct human beings for the purposes of 
medical experimentation. And those who oppose the bill, as I do, will 
do nothing less than to block Federal funding for what could, in theory 
at least, represent a potential advance in scientific inquiry.
  Given the lack of nuance of our political and media culture, Congress 
is unfortunately facing a perceived choice between supporting on the 
one hand children unlucky enough to be born with debilitating diseases, 
and on the other, children unlucky enough to be unwanted by the clinic 
customers who had them created in the first place.
  Talk show rhetoric notwithstanding, Mr. Speaker, there are no easy 
choices. This is not a debate between science and ideology, as some 
would have us believe, nor is it a debate between those who care about 
human life and those who do not. No one in this body is unmoved by the 
plight of diseased victims. We have friends and family members among 
them. Nor is anyone insensitive to the ethical ramifications of a 
medical practice that purports to save some lives by destroying others. 
But, after all, that is why we were elected: not to make the easy 
choices, but to make the hard ones.
  We will argue one of those choices today, and I urge everyone on both 
sides of the issues to do so with vigor and with respect. Our decision 
today, quite literally a matter of life and death, is a necessary and 
important step in our national conversation about the kind of people we 
will be in a world of ever more promising and ever more unnerving 
medical technologies. Lives will be changed, and perhaps ended, because 
of the path that we choose today.
  Today's debate will be our privilege to conduct and witness, Mr. 
Speaker, and I have every confidence all sides will do so with the 
respect and compassion this issue deserves.

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