Congressional Record, Volume 153 Issue 58 (Wednesday, April 11, 2007)

[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 58 (Wednesday, April 11, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4319-S4337]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

STEM CELL RESEARCH ENHANCEMENT ACT OF 2007

______

HOPE OFFERED THROUGH PRINCIPLED AND ETHICAL STEM CELL RESEARCH ACT

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the
Senate shall resume consideration of the following measures en bloc,
which the clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

A bill (S. 5) to amend the Public Health Service Act to
provide for human embryonic stem cell research.
A bill (S. 30) to intensify research to derive human
pluripotent stem cell lines.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, there is
now 90 minutes of debate under the control of the Senator from Iowa,
Mr. Harkin, or his designee; 45 minutes under the control of the
Senator from Minnesota, Mr. Coleman, and the Senator from Georgia, Mr.
Isakson, and 45 minutes under the control of the Senator from Kansas,
Mr. Brownback.
Who yields time? The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, before I yield the floor to my colleague
from Massachusetts, I just want to again bring people up to speed as to
where we are in this debate. We will debate the two bills again today,
S. 5 and S. 30, all day. We will have two votes later today at a time
to be determined by the leaders but I think right prior to 6 p.m, the
first vote occurring on S. 5, an up-or-down vote without amendments,
and after that would be an up-or-down vote on S. 30, without
amendments.

[[Page S4320]]

I intend to take some time this morning, after the Senator from
Massachusetts speaks, again to outline the differences in the two
bills, why S. 5 is a preferable bill and why that should be the bill we
pass and send to the President for his signature and to point out that
S. 5 is truly the compromise bill.
I want everyone to know that. There was some talk that S. 30 should
be the compromise. Let me point out for clarity that last year we
passed the stem cell research bill. There was another bill offered on
the floor at the same time called the Specter-Santorum bill. That bill
was supported by the Bush administration. Both bills passed, but the
Specter-Santorum bill never made it through the House, and therefore
the President was given the stem cell research bill. He vetoed it. He
exercised the only veto of his administration to veto the stem cell
bill.
In order to reach out a hand of compromise to the White House, we
then incorporated in our bill, S. 5, today, the Specter-Santorum bill
of last year, which is part of S. 5. So it seems to me we have gone
halfway at least in reaching out to the White House to provide a
compromise situation. Now the White House says they want to compromise
further. They want something else. You can keep this up until there is
nothing left of the stem cell bill.
I wish to make it very clear that we have compromised. We have come
halfway. We incorporated the bill the President supported last year, so
S. 5 really is the compromise measure we are sending to the President.
Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes or whatever time he requires to the
Senator from Massachusetts.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Massachusetts is
recognized.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I again thank my friend and colleague
from Iowa, Senator Harkin, for his steadfast leadership in this
extraordinarily important issue. We are full of hope this afternoon
about the votes here in the Senate. I welcome just a few moments to
express my own views about where I think we are and what I think the
issues really are before the Senate.
For years, many of us have fought the same battle, the battle to give
those suffering or injured every ethical option for new cures. For
those speaking on the Senate floor, perhaps little changes from one
year's debate to the next. We still speak of hope. We still speak of
dreams denied when those hopes are dashed. We still speak of our belief
that medical research should be valued.
But for those who listen to our debate, a year can make all the
difference in the world. For a young man or woman bravely serving their
country, a year can make the difference between vigorous active service
and life in a wheelchair or a brain injury from a war wound. For
someone fighting the long and lonely battle against Alzheimer's
disease, a year can make the memory of a beloved spouse or child a
little fainter, a little more distant. For a patient battling against
the tremors of Parkinson's disease, a year can mean more and more life
activities fade out of reach.
If overturning the administration's unwarranted restrictions on stem
cell research brings just one breakthrough, just one of the many that
our best scientists believe are possible, that breakthrough can mean
all the difference in the world for the patients who benefit. They
cannot wait another year, or another day, for the help stem cell
research can bring, and we should not wait in aiding them. We must take
action here and now to end these unnecessary and harmful restrictions
on lifesaving research.
Continuing the administration's restrictions means the gap between
what scientists could do and what they are allowed to do grows even
wider.
Continuing the restrictions means our Nation's best scientists will
go on having to waste precious time on pointless redtape and
bureaucratic obstacles, time that should be spent on the search for new
cures.
Continuing the restrictions means having to tell the patients who are
counting on the promise of stem cell research: Wait just a little
longer, dream just a little less, hope just a little more faintly.
The Senate must act, just as the House has already, to unlock the
potential of stem cell research.
When the Congress has approved this needed legislation, we must turn
our attention to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and urge the President of the
United States not to veto the legislation that gives so much hope to so
many.
Mr. President, just an extraordinary statement and comment from the
Nation's leading scientist, Dr. Zerhouni, who is the head of the
National Institutes of Health:

From my standpoint as NIH director, it is in the best
interest of our scientists, our science, and our country that
we find ways and the nation finds a way to allow the science
to go full speed across adult and embryonic stem cells
equally.

This is the statement of the head of the National Institutes of
Health, an extraordinary scientist and researcher himself. It couldn't
be said more clearly and more compellingly.
Finally, to remind ourselves what this really is all about--because
it is basically about individuals--here are two extraordinary soldiers
who served in Iraq. James Crossby, Winthrop, MA, is now in a wheelchair
because of a damaged spinal column--others could have similar
situations from their own States--and Sgt Jason Wittling, Marine Corps,
injured in Karbala, again with spinal cord injuries. And that is one of
the areas where there is such great hope.
Finally, one of the most moving letters I have received in the time I
have been in the Senate was on this issue, from Lauren Stanford, from
Plymouth, MA--15 years old. She wrote just after watching the President
of the United States speak on this issue when he set up the regime on
which we have all commented, which limits the great possibilities we
have talked about during the course of this debate. This is what she
said:

That night--

Referring to the night the President talked--

President Bush talked about protecting the innocent. I
wondered then: what about me? I am truly innocent in this
situation. I did nothing to bring my diabetes on; there is
nothing I can do to make it any better. All I can do is hope
for a research breakthrough and keep living the difficult,
demanding life of a child with diabetes until that
breakthrough comes. How, I asked my parents, is it more
important to throw discarded embryos into the trash than it
is to let them be used to hopefully save my life--and to give
me back a life where I don't have to accept a constant,
almost insane level of hourly medical intervention as
``normal''? How could my nation do this to me?

That is the issue which Lauren Stanford has put before the Senate.
Hopefully she will get an overwhelming, bipartisan answer this
afternoon when the roll is called.
I yield the remainder of my time..
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I yield 20 minutes to the Senator from
North Dakota. How much time do we have remaining on our side?
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Eighty minutes.
The Senator from North Dakota is recognized.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me thank my colleague from Iowa for
his leadership. I know he and many others in this Chamber have spent a
great deal of time putting together a piece of legislation that is very
important. I commend all of them.
There are times on the floor of the Senate where we are engaged in
certain kinds of debates that cause folks to exhibit some temper and
some concern and anxiety and impatience. This is one of those issues,
however, that people feel very differently about. We will have people
come to the floor on this issue of stem cell research who feel very
strongly on both sides.
I respect all of those views. I respect everyone who comes to this
floor with a position on this issue. But let me say, the position, as I
see it, is a position that deals with life and death. This is very
important. We deal with some issues on the floor of the Senate that are
not so important, some that are very important. This ranks way up there
in importance.
This is about life or death. It is about science, and it is about
inquiry. It is about the search for unlocking the mysteries of what
causes some of the dreaded diseases here on Earth and how we find cures
for these dreaded diseases.
I chair a subcommittee that funds the science programs in our
country,

[[Page S4321]]

especially the science programs that have to do with, for example,
energy and other related matters. I think science is fascinating. In my
subcommittee, we had testimony a while ago about studying termites. We
are studying the digestive system of termites because we are trying to
understand why it is when a termite eats wood, the termite's digestive
system produces hydrogen. How is it that a termite eats wood and
produces hydrogen? Again, what an interesting scientific inquiry.
Well, we are engaged in scientific research in a whole range of
issues. Especially important are the areas of scientific inquiry in
this area of health. What is it that causes these terrible diseases?
What kinds of approaches might give us a chance to cure some of these
dreaded diseases?
Well, one of those issues is the issue of stem cell research. The
language almost sounds like a foreign language in some of these
discussions: somatic cell nuclear transfer, in vitro fertilization
clinic, stem cell research. Those are not terms people use every day in
their discussions, and yet the method of using those terms in this
discussion is about life or death. It is about continuing scientific
inquiry to try to unlock the mysteries of some of the most terrible
diseases suffered by mankind.
We passed a piece of legislation last July that moved in this
direction, and the President decided to veto it. Legislation that we
hoped would perhaps give us an opportunity for treatment for things
such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, Parkinson's disease, ALS,
Alzheimer's, birth defects, and spinal cord injuries.
We do not know, we cannot come to the floor of the Senate, we are not
scientists to describe: Here is exactly what will happen as a result of
this scientific inquiry. But we do know there are at least indications
of great hope through this scientific inquiry. So the Stem Cell
Research Enhancement Act, S. 5, which we now have on the floor of the
Senate, would allow researchers to pursue all kinds of promising stem
cell research, including embryonic stem cell research that is federally
funded.
This legislation is controversial. The legislation deals, however,
only with embryos that were created for fertility purposes in in vitro
fertilization clinics that would otherwise be thrown away.
Now, in vitro is a relatively new term. It has been around for about
25 years. There are more than 1 million children walking this planet of
ours who were born as a result of in vitro fertilization. We had
testimony before one of my committees, the Commerce Committee, in which
a witness said: None of them should have been born. None of these human
beings are worthy. They should not have been born. He disagrees with in
vitro fertilization. It is his right to do that. I do not support that.
I think the wonder of life of having 1 million people, 1 million
people who once were babies born to people, to couples who were not
able to have children, is a wonderful gift. What a wonderful gift.
In vitro has been around for a quarter of a century. Because of the
nature of the treatment, the infertility treatment in this process,
more embryos are created than will ever be used. Rather than throwing
these embryos in the waste, as hospital waste, or just waste from an in
vitro clinic, it is much more life affirming, I think, to use them to
better understand how we might treat devastating diseases such as
diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer's, and more.
I think Senator Jack Danforth, former Senator Jack Danforth, said it
best. He is a colleague who served here with us in the Senate. He said
this: It is not evident to many of us that cells in a petri dish are
equivalent to identifiable people suffering from terrible diseases. I
am and have always been pro-life. But the only explanation for
legislators comparing cells in a petri dish to babies in the womb is
the extension of religious doctrine into statutory law.
That is from former Senator Jack Danforth. What a profound statement.
Do you equate the cells in a petri dish with someone suffering the
ravages of Parkinson's disease or ALS? I do not think so. But that
suggests somehow that those who oppose this legislation make that
equation.
This legislation is not suggesting that anyone create an embryo for
the purpose of research. It is saying those embryos that are about to
be discarded, thrown away, thousands of them, because many more are
produced than are to be used in in vitro clinics, rather than simply
throwing them away, how about--with the consent of those from whom the
embryos came--how about using them for a life-affirming purpose, for
the needed research into unlocking the mysteries of these devastating
diseases?
There are about 400,000 embryos frozen in these clinics. It is
estimated 8,000 to 11,000 are scheduled to be discarded. It is
interesting to me that no one has come to the floor of the Senate--that
I am aware of--saying: Shut down these in vitro clinics. Shut them
down. And, by the way, if someone tries to throw away an embryo, as
they do every day, if they try to throw one away, have someone arrest
them because you are throwing away a human being. It is, of course, not
a human being. It has the potential to become a human being if it is
implanted in a woman's uterus and grown to term. But it will not be
implanted in a uterus. In fact, it will be discarded in a wastebasket.
The question my colleagues asks with S. 5 is: With consent, should
that embryo, rather than simply be discarded, not be able to be used
for this critically important research?

There are not enough stem cell lines available. We know that. My
colleagues have made that case. The President authorized some stem cell
lines, but the authorized lines were never enough, and, in fact, they
were contaminated, and it is just a plain fact that we are, at this
point, interrupting the scientific inquiry. We are interrupting the
opportunity to search for a cure for these diseases.
The embryos we are discussing on the floor of the Senate are going to
be destroyed. That is certain. These embryos are going to be destroyed.
Could they, should they be used to search for the cure for these dread
diseases? I believe the answer is yes.
In my last campaign for the Senate, a curious commercial was run
against me by my opponent. He ran a commercial which is a description
of some who feel very strongly in opposition to this kind of
legislation. Because I support stem cell research very strongly, my
opponent ran a commercial of a man sitting around the fire, a kind of a
campfire with about six or eight young children around him.
The commercial, I suppose, was meant to be humorous but about a
serious subject. A young child, with eyes very big reflected in the
glow of the fire, around that fireplace, said to the camp leader: Tell
us a story. Tell us a scary story.
The man said: Well, there is a man named Byron--referring to me, I
guess--a man named Byron. He has a plan. His plan is to implant into a
mommy's uterus an egg that is fertilized, to become a fetus, so that
they can harvest it during that pregnancy to use it for body parts
later.
Little children around that campfire had eyes the size of dinner
plates, from that scary story. Of course, that was a complete
perversion of anything that remotely related to the truth, had no
relationship to any of these issues.
No one is talking about implanting something in a uterus for the
purpose of growing a fetus, for the purpose of harvesting body parts.
That kind of unbelievable lie permeates all too often this discussion.
That is not what this discussion is about.
Those of us in this Chamber--and there are many of us who have sat in
the front row of a funeral--in my case of a daughter--and asked
ourselves: Was there anything, was there anything more we could have
done?
Is there anything that could have been done to prevent this disease?
The answer, if we prevent this kind of research, the answer for
everyone will be, yes, there is something we could have done. We could
have continued the scientific inquiry and research, with carefully
constructed guidelines, to see if we could unlock the mysteries of
these diseases.
Let me show a picture of a young girl named Camille. In fact, I just
saw Camille last month. This young girl has been very near death. She
suffers from juvenile diabetes, the particularly acute condition of
juvenile diabetes. That is Camille in the middle. I saw her mother last
week in North Dakota. Camille was in Washington, DC, about

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a month ago with her mother. I have known Camille for a long time, this
young girl holding the clarinet in her middle school band. She has had
a tough life and has lived on the edge, suffering a very significant
disease, one that has cost too many, too many Americans, and especially
too many young Americans, their lives.
But there are so many opportunities for research and for potential
treatment. Let me give you a couple of examples. I was on an airplane
one day with one of the researchers at NIH. The researchers at NIH do
unbelievable work. He told me of the use of stem cells among a group of
mice that had induced heart attacks, severe, debilitating heart
attacks. They used stem cells to inject back into the heart muscle of
those mice, and in a matter of a couple of weeks, a substantial
percentage of those mice showed no evidence of having had a heart
attack. A substantial portion had complete recovery.
Let me give you a couple of other examples. Researchers at Johns
Hopkins report paralyzed rats have partially regained the use of
previously immobile hind legs in studies in which scientists injected
the rodents with stem cells from mice embryos.
As to potential to treat ALS, University of Wisconsin-Madison
scientists have turned stem cells into nerve cells carrying messages
between the body to the brain, offering possibilities for repairing
damage caused by ALS.
Embryonic stem cell researchers at UCLA, AIDS Institute, were able to
coax human embryonic stem cells into becoming mature immune T cells. I
am not a scientist. All I can tell you is this: When we look, when we
search, when we inquire, when we use America's best minds and research
using good ethical guidelines, important guidelines, valuable
guidelines, for scientific inquiry, we then find ways to unlock these
mysteries. It is pretty unbelievable what we have done in a relatively
short period of time.
We have a polio vaccine. We have cured smallpox. If you go to the
hospital these days and take a look at the wondrous machines and the
wonderful treatments and all of the things that we are doing, all of
that is a matter of experimentation and developing experience from that
experimentation.
The fact is, embryonic stem cell research has very broad and very
strong bipartisan support. That bipartisan support is evident in the
Senate. We have had Senators on both sides of the political aisle stand
up in strong support of this legislation.
Now, let me use a chart that my colleague, Senator Kennedy, just used
because I believe it is so important.
Dr. Zerhouni, the Director of the National Institutes of Health,
says--this is President Bush's own NIH Director: From my standpoint, it
is clear today that American science will be better served, and the
Nation will be better served, if we let our scientists have access to
more stem cell lines.
That is from the President's own appointee to head the National
Institutes of Health.
I know in political life, there are a lot of labels, pro-life, pro-
choice, pro-this, pro-that, anti-that. Let me observe, it is not, as
some have suggested, a pro-life position to diminish or shut off
critically needed research that will give people who have Parkinson's
disease, diabetes, Lou Gehrig's disease, cardiovascular disease,
cancer, any number of the things that kill so many Americans, it is not
pro-life to diminish, restrict, or shut down research that gives people
an opportunity for hope that there might be a cure for these diseases
through this scientific inquiry and research. I recognize this is
controversial. I respect someone who comes to the floor and says:
Senator Dorgan, you are wrong about this. I respect that. This is not
an easy issue. It is difficult for a lot of Members. I have not found
it particularly difficult for me, because I believe those of us who
have seen the ravages--and that should be most everybody in this
Chamber--of these diseases to our loved ones, to friends, to so many
Americans, this country would want us to do everything possible to give
the tools to the best scientific minds and the best people in the
medical field possible to unlock the mysteries of these diseases and
find the cures. That is what this debate has been long about.
This debate, however, is even narrower than many we have had on this
subject. This is about a single issue--can we use embryos that are
otherwise going to be discarded from in vitro fertilization clinics,
that are otherwise simply going to become waste and destroyed, today,
tomorrow, next week, next month, all year long, can we use, with the
permission of the donors, those embryos for the scientific inquiry
necessary for the extension of life and the curing of these dread
diseases? Can we do that? The answer clearly ought to be yes, a loud,
resounding yes coming from this Chamber.
My colleague Senator Harkin has been at this a long time. I have
spoken on this a good number of times on the floor of the Senate
myself. But it is not only Senator Harkin; he is joined in a piece of
legislation on a bipartisan basis by some very significant voices in
the Senate, saying: Let's do this. Let's do this for this country. All
of those who are suffering from these dread diseases deserve our help.
They certainly don't deserve a Government that says: By the way, we
understand your suffering, but we would prefer to choose to destroy and
discard embryos from an in vitro fertilization clinic rather than
extend the scientific research that might find a cure for what is
killing you. That is not an acceptable answer from this Senate.
I thank Senator Harkin for the time. I thank the many colleagues who
have spoken in favor of this legislation and offer the fervent hope--
and I believe it exists--that we can pass this legislation with a very
substantial margin within the next 24 hours.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from North Dakota for
a very eloquent statement about what this is all about. I thank him for
that. I thank him for his strong support of S. 5, our legislation to
basically do what he encapsulated by saying this is about saving lives.
That is what it is all about.
I ask unanimous consent that the previous order be modified to
provide that the vote on passage of S. 5 occur at 5:55 p.m., that the
Republican leader be recognized at 5:25 p.m., with the other provisions
remaining in order; provided further, that the additional 10 minutes be
equally divided between Senators Harkin and Coleman, Isakson, and
Senator Brownback, or their designees.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
The Senator from Georgia.
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the distinguished
Senator from Minnesota, Mr. Coleman, who has worked countless hours on
this very important subject.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Minnesota.
Mr. COLEMAN. Mr. President, as I listened to my distinguished
colleague from North Dakota, there is so much we agree on. What we
agree on is we want to move science forward. We want to provide hope to
those who are suffering from diseases and conditions with the
possibility of stem cell research. The issue is a matter of Federal
funding. What do we put Federal dollars into? Should there be any moral
questions that are raised before we make that decision to put Federal
dollars into something? That is a legitimate issue to discuss in the
Senate. It is a reflection of the reality that in this country there is
substantial disagreement about what is appropriate use of Federal
dollars. This is not about shutting off research. It is not about
stopping research. It is not about a lack of research going on. We
still lead the world in embryonic stem cell research. With forty
percent of all the publications that are offered in this country, 85
percent of the dollars from what we have provided, both embryonic and
adult stem cell research, we are leading the world. That includes both
Federal dollars and substantial private dollars.
When this issue arose early on, President Clinton had his own
bioethics commission. They concluded the derivation of stem cells from
embryos remaining following infertility treatments is justifiable only
if no less morally problematic alternatives are available for advancing
the research.
The reality is, we have reached a point where there are available
alternatives, and we have an opportunity to

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pursue them. There is a political reality as well; that is, that S. 5
will pass. The President has said he is going to veto it because of his
concern on Federal funding for the destruction of human embryos. As a
result, from January 1 of this year, there is going to be no more
research going into embryonic stem cell research tomorrow than there is
today, unless we pass S. 30.

S. 5 is going to be vetoed. If you care about making more than a
political statement but actually talking to the parents of kids with
juvenile diabetes or adults with Parkinson's, whatever, the reality is,
if you care about more than $132 million going into human embryonic
stem cell research, you have to support S. 30. That is the political
reality.
What S. 30 offers, in addition, is the opportunity to have a greater
sense of national unity on this issue, to get beyond the culture wars,
to get beyond the political division. That is what the research should
be about.
Senator Isakson has talked about dead embryo research. I hope the
description was clear enough. There was some confusion from some of my
colleagues on the other side of this issue. Let me explain a little
biology 101. The issue here is, can we produce pluripotent cells--
embryonic cells are pluripotent--the capacity for the cell to give rise
to many other different types of cells. There are adult stem cells out
of bone marrow, out of blood type. Now we are looking at placental and
embryonic. But there appears to be, and science will tell you, the
ability of embryonic pluripotent cells.
The difference here is between pluripotent and totipotent, the
ability to form an embryo, the beginning of life. Senator Isakson has
talked about dead embryo research where the embryos have the ability to
form pluripotent cells, those cells that have the capacity to
differentiate into other types of cells. That is an opportunity without
crossing a moral line. All of America can come together and say: This
is a good thing, putting money into stem cell research and not dividing
the Nation.
There is the process called alternate nuclear transfer. This is a
process that if you look at natural fertilization, you get the sperm
and the fertilized egg. You get an embryo. Under SCNT--that is the way
Dolly the sheep was produced, a type of cloning--you get the egg cell.
You take some adult genetic material with all the DNA, and you put that
in an enucleated egg where the center is cut out. You get that
fertilized egg and, boom, you get an embryo. Science is telling us
today that you can, with all the natural nuclear transfer, with a range
of things, what you can do is, you can take that egg, you can enucleate
it, cut out the center, put in adult material. But before you transfer
it, you turn off a little code. In the end, you don't get an embryo but
you get this intercell mass then that has the capacity of pluripotency,
not an embryo but the ability to differentiate cell types and all of
the elasticity and the hope and possibility you get from embryonic stem
cell research without crossing a moral line.
Is that what we should be doing? This is not shutting off science.
Some have said this is a diversion. Certainly it is not a diversion in
the practical sense, because right now there will be, if S. 5 passes,
no additional funding for embryonic stem cell research. But if S. 30
passes, we can open the world to these possibilities and additional
Federal dollars. The reality is, with S. 5 there are questions that are
unanswered. I was just talking about those lines that are in vitro
fertilization that some say could be thrown away. What is to stop
people from simply producing more, knowing the research money is going
to be there? The reality is, those cells that are in those IVF clinics
have limited genetic lines. If you are of a certain minority or other
groups, you are not as represented in those as you are in the
population. But if we look at things such as alternate nuclear
transfer, you can have an unending supply of genetic material so you
can deal with specific gene types and deal with specific illnesses.
S. 30 also includes a provision to set up a stem cell bank for
amniotic and placental stem cells, the idea that we could have 100,000
tissue samples and, by virtue of that, cover all the genetic types
there are, which you do not get with what we have now under S. 5.
The bottom line in all of this is, there is a debate in this country,
but it is not over moving the science forward. The debate is not over
whether there should be hope. There is hope. It is important to
understand some of the realities, the reality of what we are talking
about today. Yesterday one of my colleagues, the Senator from Iowa, was
talking about some of the work being done with dead embryos, perhaps
some of the work being done with alternate nuclear transfer, and saying
this could take a decade. The reality is the work being done today in
embryonic stem cell research at best may take decades. So the question
then ultimately is, can we as a nation decide on a process that does
respect a moral line, that does say: We are not going to provide
Federal funding for the destruction of a human embryo, but because we
have the possibility, we should explore the possibility of doing
research that provides for pluripotency without totipotency, without
the creation of an embryo.
We are going to have more difficult questions as we move forward. As
we look at the issue of stem cell research, one of the realities we are
looking at is, if they haven't developed enough, what about the idea of
developing limbs and other things. Should we let the embryo grow
longer? Where do you draw that line? There is a whole range of other
issues we are going to have to be debating as we kind of move along
this process with the great advances of scientists. For those of us who
support S. 30, what we are saying is we have a path, we have an
opportunity to do it with a sense of unity, with a sense of where we
provide a moral line, a line, by the way, that has been part of our
statutes for a long time. We don't provide Federal funding for the
destruction of human embryos. That is what this is about. It is not
about size. The reality about size is that you could fit some of these
on the head of a pin. But it is about that basic moral line which has
been part of our law for a long time.

So this approach we have in S. 5 is an approach that is pro-science
and pro-research and pro-hope. It is the only practical one that in the
end, if it passes, will result in more funding for embryonic stem cell
research tomorrow than we have today.
My fear is what happened last year will happen this year. This body
passed both a version of S. 5 as well as a version that provided for
some alternatives. It was the Specter-Santorum bill. S. 30 provides for
more than that bill. It will provide for, in fact, new dollars going to
research that isn't funded today.
What the House chose to say is it is all or nothing. If you don't
pass the S. 5 version, the Castle bill, then we are not going to even
put in any funding. We are not going to do anything. We are not going
to allow any alternatives to be pursued. That would be a shame. As I
used to tell our kids, it is akin to cutting off your nose to spite
your face. That would be a shame.
I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle--wherever they stand
on this issue they can be comfortable supporting S. 30; they can be
comfortable supporting a bill that provides for the moral line but at
the same time opens up the opportunity for additional research. I urge
its support.
I yield the floor.
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I yield myself 3 minutes. I wish to
commend Senator Coleman and Senator Dorgan for the two speeches that
have preceded my remarks because both of them eloquently expressed what
is, in fact, the case; that is, that everybody in this Chamber,
including the distinguished Senator from Iowa and myself, wants more
hope for Americans who suffer. Both bills offer a path to do that. We
may have our differences on those paths but no difference in the hope
that it offers. I commend Senator Coleman for his very articulate
explanation of that.
I join with the Senator from Iowa, I think, in encouraging our
colleagues who may be listening, we have some time this morning that
can be filled. If we have Members who want to come to the floor and
speak, they should contact the cloakroom and let us know, from both
parties and from both sides of every issue, because we want to fill
every minute.
With that, I reserve the remainder of my time.

[[Page S4324]]

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I concur with my friend from Georgia in
that if people want to speak, they should come over now. We have a list
of speakers, and I think Senator Isakson does, too, for later on in the
day. I can only say to Senators, as the clock ticks, your time is going
to get squeezed more and more. So that if you are scheduled to speak
for, say, 10 minutes this afternoon, you may get squeezed to 3 minutes
or 2 minutes or 1 minute. So if you would like to have your say about
this embryonic stem cell bill, I would say now would be the time to
come over. I say to all the Senators who may be in their offices right
now, call the cloakrooms, and we will make the time available right
now.
Mr. President, what is the situation, might I ask, right now with the
time existing?
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Iowa has 58
minutes, the Senator from Georgia has 33 minutes, and the Senator from
Kansas has 45 minutes.
Mr. ISAKSON. It is my understanding, if the Senator from Iowa will
yield, that the Senator from Kansas is in the cloakroom and about to
take a significant portion of that. That is my understanding. That
would be a significant portion of his time, not yours and mine.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Kansas is
recognized.
Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues for the debate,
and a good one, we are having on a very important topic. The
differences in this debate remind me, though, of a proverb that says
there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of
death. Unfortunately, if we research on young human life, it puts that
young human life to death and at the same time does not produce the
results for cures that we had hoped would be taking place.
I respect my colleagues who are on another side of this issue who
feel as though we should research on young human life. I do not feel
that is right or ethical. I will discuss that aspect here today with
some of the time I have, and I also wish to discuss the exciting
breaking developments that are taking place even today on the adult
stem cell area that continues to produce treatments for humans.
I ask unanimous consent to enter into the Record after my statement
an article from the Chicago Tribune online edition.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. BROWNBACK. It is dated today. It is about the latest diabetes
treatments that have been taking place. A report came out from
Northwestern University in the Chicago area about a new diabetes
treatment developed at Northwestern University which has allowed some
patients to stop taking insulin for more than 2 years. They have raised
questions about this process. It was done in Brazil rather than in the
United States. Thirteen of the fifteen patients in this adult stem cell
study went off insulin for at least 6 months, as they note, prompting
cautious excitement from some researchers who have seen the results.
Dr. Gordon C. Weir, a diabetes researcher and head of a transplantation
program at Harvard's Medical School, Joslin Diabetes Center, said this:

Their results look better than anything I have seen so far.

What an exciting development in the adult stem cell research area and
field.
Questions have been raised about this trial and some of it taking
place in Brazil. I have raised questions such as why is it we are
seeing these breakthroughs taking place and we are having patients from
the United States go to Bangkok, go to Portugal, and these treatments
are being developed in Brazil rather than in the United States. I
believe if we would put our funding here that we are using in the
embryonic field, the $613 million that has produced no human treatments
to date but has produced a lot of tumors in live animals, if we would
put that in the adult field where we are getting results--we have
invested in the adult field, but what if that $613 million were in the
adult field today? Would these breakthroughs be happening here instead
of Brazil, or by U.S. researchers in Brazil? Why aren't they being done
in the United States? I hope my colleagues will look at that issue.
There is another point I wish to raise with my colleagues at this
point in time. Let's presume they are successful in embryonic stem cell
research. Let's presume, in a decade or 20 years, they are successful
with embryonic stem cell research. That is going to lead to the
necessity of us moving forward with human cloning because in the
development of this technology, embryonic stem cell technology, if you
are using an embryo and the genetic material doesn't match up, there is
going to be rejection by my body or by some body. That is going to
happen. That is going to take place. So we are going to have to move
into human cloning. We are going to have to harvest women's eggs,
develop human clones to develop the correct type of embryonic stem
cells to use in an individual so that there will be a genetic match. I
think we ought to talk about that, if we continue in the progression we
are on.
I acknowledge that human cloning is not specifically addressed in S.
5, the embryonic stem cell bill. However, if embryonic stem cells can
ever overcome their tumor-forming tendency--and that is a huge if--and
they are used in humans, human cloning will be used in order to avoid
immune rejection problems. Therefore, as is hopefully evident, the
issue of human cloning needs to be raised.
To this end, I recently introduced the bipartisan Brownback-Landrieu
Human Cloning Prohibition Act, which we introduced before the break
with 26 other Senators who are cosponsoring this legislation.
This legislation would reaffirm that the United States places
tremendous value on the dignity of each and every human person: from
the young human embryo to vulnerable women who would be coerced into
donating their eggs, at potentially great risk to their health. The
legislation would make clear that the cloning of human persons is not
something we as a society will accept.
The Brownback-Landrieu Human Cloning Prohibition Act has been
endorsed by the President of the United States. It will bring the
United States into conformity with the United Nations, whose General
Assembly called on all member states ``to prohibit all forms of human
cloning.'' It did not say we can do therapeutic but not reproductive.
It said ``all forms of human cloning'' by a strong 84-to-34 margin vote
in the U.N.
The problem with cloning human beings is that it violates human
dignity on all sorts of levels. Cloning transgresses our heritage's
most sacred values about what is good and true and beautiful. Western
civilization indeed is built on the tenet that every human life has a
measurable value. Human beings are ends in themselves. It is wrong to
use any person as a means to an end. Upon this principle our laws are
founded, and without it, laws have little basis. Human cloning--for
whatever purpose--is wrong because it turns humans into commodities or
spare parts.
In recent debate, human cloning has been referred to as ``therapeutic
cloning,'' ``research cloning'' or simply SCNT. These are presented as
contrasts to ``reproductive cloning.'' It should be noted that
``therapeutic,'' ``research,'' and ``reproductive'' are merely
adjectives to describe what is done with the cloned human. SCNT, or
somatic cell nuclear transfer, is the scientific description of the
cloning process.
A CRS report for Congress notes:

A human embryo produced via cloning involves the process
called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). In SCNT, the
nucleus of an egg is removed and replaced by the nucleus from
a mature body cell, such as a skin cell. In cloning, the
embryo is created without sexual reproduction: There is no
joining of egg and sperm.

Stem cell pioneer James Thomson has said:

If you create an embryo by SCNT cloning and you give it to
somebody who didn't know where it came from, there would be
no test you would do on that embryo to say where it came
from. It is what it is. If you try to define it away, you are
being disingenuous.

With ``reproductive'' and ``therapeutic'' cloning, human beings are
turned into commodities or spare parts to be dissected in the
laboratory, with the claim that someday they may be

[[Page S4325]]

administered to other humans to provide a treatment. Treatments are
certainly praiseworthy but not at the expense of the destruction of
other members of the human family. We all want to treat people as
people, and people should be treated as people. I want to find a cure
for cancer. However, it is wrong to turn humans into a means to an end.
It is also wrong to exploit women for their eggs. Here I want to
develop this thought about what will take place if human embryonic stem
cell research is developed, is successful. We have to develop clones
that meet the genetic type of the individual seeking the treatment. You
are going to have to get eggs from somewhere and you are going to have
to get these from people--from women. Also, it is wrong to exploit
women for their eggs, and that is the other side of the human cloning
story. SCNT cloning, as proposed by proponents of the technique, would
require millions of human eggs. In all likelihood, poor and
disadvantaged women would be particularly vulnerable to exploitation
via financial incentives for donation. This is troubling because
retrieving such eggs violates the dignity of a woman and may cause
serious harm to her health.
The Brownback-Landrieu Human Cloning Prohibition Act is the only
effective ban on human cloning. Any other ban is one that is allowing
therapeutic cloning and even encouraging it but certainly not banning
human cloning. Others would regulate what could be done with the human
clones, normally requiring its destruction, but they do nothing to
prevent the process of human cloning, which violates human dignity on
many levels. We should take a stand against turning young human beings
into commodities. We should not destroy human life for research
purposes.
I will not be voting for cloning today, and I will continue to look
for an opportunity to bring this legislation forward as an amendment to
other bills. Again, I point out to my colleagues that is the route we
are on with this--to promote human cloning so there will be genetic
matches in the human embryonic stem cell procedures. I do not believe
that is the path we should follow.
I want to address some of the thoughts several colleagues have
brought up about what it is we are doing. Human embryos are being
destroyed for research purposes and for stem cells. Some have referred
to this as ``potential life,'' which strikes me as a bit like the
debate we had on the issue of slavery, where we deemed a person three-
fifths of a person at one point in time. That is a complete legal
fiction. You are either a person or you are not. You are either life or
you are not life. It is not potential life. Nowhere in the scientific
literature is there a description of potential life. The embryo is a
species at that stage of development in the life cycle. That is the
scientific definition and information--the embryo is a species at that
stage of development in the life cycle. We all have a life cycle. The
embryo is the species at that stage. That is common sense. The embryo
stage is a development stage, but it remains human life, not potential
human life. It is alive and it is a life.
The embryo would continue along the life cycle continuum if we were
not interfering in its normal development by keeping it in a freezer
and destroying it for experiments. I think it is important that we not
engage in wishful thinking or trying to define this away. A human
embryo is a human life. We should not say it is a potential life. That
is not a definition for what human life is. I noted in the debate
earlier--I want to make this point at this time--that it appears as if
at the current research rate it would take 100 or more human eggs per
cloned embryo--100 you are going to have to harvest from young women to
get this process to move forward with human cloning.
Mr. President, I will reserve the remainder of my time at this point.
I yield the floor.

Exhibit 1

[From the Chicago Tribune, Apr. 11, 2007]

Hope, Risk in Diabetes Trial

(By Jeremy Manier)

A new diabetes treatment developed at Northwestern
University has allowed some patients to stop taking insulin
for more than two years, but it also has spurred ethical
objections from researchers who say the trial put Brazilian
children at unnecessary risk.
Thirteen of the 15 patients in a stem-cell study went off
insulin for at least six months, prompting cautious
excitement from some researchers who have seen the results,
to be published Wednesday in the Journal of the American
Medical Association. All of the patients had the less common
form of diabetes called early-onset, or Type 1 diabetes,
which normally requires close blood-glucose monitoring and
long-term use of insulin injections.
The new approach, designed by Dr. Richard Burt of
Northwestern, enlists a patient's own stem cells in an effort
to halt the immune system's destruction of insulin-producing
``beta'' cells in the pancreas--the root cause of Type 1
diabetes.
Burt drafted the protocol, and doctors at the University of
Sao Paulo in Brazil carried it out. The patients, some as
young as 14, got intense drug treatment that wiped out their
immune systems. They then received injections of their own
blood stem cells in hopes of renewing the immune system
without the trait that makes it target beta cells.
``Their results look better than anything I've seen so
far,'' said Dr. Gordon C. Weir, a diabetes researcher and
head of a transplantation program at Harvard Medical School's
Joslin Diabetes Center.
Though small in scale, the study is significant as the
first attempt to treat diabetes using a ``cell-based''
therapy, researchers said. Such treatments may become more
common as scientists look beyond insulin and try approaches
using adult stem cells or embryonic stem cells, which could
directly replace the tissue damaged in diabetes. Type 1
diabetes accounts for 5 to 10 percent of the 21 million
diabetes cases in the U.S.; the rest suffer from Type 2
diabetes, which is linked with obesity.
``These are promising results that suggest we should go
further,'' said Burt, a specialist in immunesuppression
therapy.
Yet some experts doubted the protocol could have been
approved in this country. Weir, like several other scientists
reached for this report, said the risks of Burt's technique
are high enough that he probably would not have approved the
experiment if he had been responsible for reviewing it.
The problem is this: Although early-onset diabetes can have
dire long-term effects such as blindness and heart disease,
many patients succeed in managing their condition with
insulin and lead normal lives for decades. That makes it
harder to justify the risks of stem cell transplantation,
which Burt has used before on diseases with few other
treatment options, such as lupus or multiple sclerosis.
The immune suppression used in stem-cell transplants can
cause infections and even death. None of the patients in the
Brazilian study died, though one had severe pneumonia that
required supplementary oxygen.
Several experts said the risks could have made it difficult
to get the study past American institutional review boards--
groups responsible for ensuring that research is safe and
ethical.
``This is an incredibly invasive therapy to be tried on
children without knowing if anyone will benefit from it,''
said Dr. Lainie Ross, associate director of the University of
Chicago's MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics.
Ross said she would not have authorized such a study unless
it enrolled only adults. She said research ethics guidelines
state that risky experimental therapies should not be used on
children unless it's impossible to test them on adult
subjects--and in this case, adult diabetes patients were
available.
In fact, Burt said his original protocol included a cutoff
age of 18, but a Brazilian review board changed it to allow
younger patients in the study. Ages of the subjects ranged
from 14 to 31, with eight participants younger than 18.
Burt said the study was done in Brazil not to avoid the
need for an American review board, but because he couldn't
find an American diabetes expert interested in pursuing his
idea. He said Northwestern review board officials told him
his collaboration with the Brazilian team was fine so long as
he was not directly involved in patient care. The Juvenile
Diabetes Research Foundation cautiously embraced the
technique while pointing out the need for further study. A
statement from the group said that in the trial, ``the immune
system was apparently reset or retrained, and after the
procedure, the symptoms of diabetes were reversed.''
But the statement also noted that because of the risks,
``it is not clear whether this trial would be approved in the
U.S.''
One weakness of the study was its lack of a control group,
said Dr. Mark Anderson of the University of California at San
Francisco's Diabetes Center. Without that, it's impossible to
quantify how much improvement the therapy offered. One
scientist interested in taking the next step is Dr. Jay
Skyler of the University of Miami, who wrote an accompanying
editorial in JAMA.
``I don't think [this study] would have gotten approval at
our institution out of the box.'' Skyler said. ``But now that
it's worked I would be championing it. I want to be one of
the sites that's doing it.''

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Who yields time?
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

[[Page S4326]]

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Who yields time?
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from
Massachusetts.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Massachusetts is
recognized.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank the Chair and the distinguished
manager. I thank him also for his leadership on this issue, which has
been long and steady.
Last summer, I had the privilege of coming to the floor to speak on
this issue, accompanied by a summer intern from my office, a college
student from Massachusetts named Beth Colby. Beth was paralyzed from
the chest down in a car accident when she was 14 years old. She came to
Washington, like so many women, and so many young folks, period, to
learn about Government. She also came here with a determination to try
to fight for the scientific research that holds untold promise for her
and for tens of millions of Americans. She wanted to be, as she put it
to me in asking to come to the floor during the debate on stem cell
research, a face Senators can see so they can see what they are voting
for.
The truth is there are people like that in every single community in
our country. They are all hoping to benefit one day from lifesaving
stem cell therapy. Grandparents with Parkinson's disease have that
hope. Soldiers coming back from Iraq who are crippled by a roadside
bomb have that hope. Children who, decades from now, will suffer from a
disease we are not aware of yet, or that we know well, hope stem cell
research might be able to cure them.
Since we first heard about stem cell research several years ago, the
country has been on a journey together. We have discussed it. A lot of
folks have sat around their kitchen tables and in their living rooms
and have talked about stem cell research. Everybody has debated it. We
have learned a lot more about the promise and the peril of stem cell
research. At first, our natural reaction was to temper our excitement
with a well-founded fear that this technology perhaps posed
insurmountable ethical hurdles. The President himself deliberated. He
appointed a task force. He studied and debated the fine points with
teams of bioethicists. He reached what he felt was a reasonable
compromise. In August of 2001, he announced to the American people that
Federal funds would be used only for research on a few lines of stem
cells that were already harvested. Back then, he said stem cells
``offer both great promise and great peril. I have decided we must
proceed with great care.''
That was the President speaking. Since then, America's understanding
of this issue has evolved. We have learned that the lines available for
research are far less useful than we had initially hoped. We learned
the technology is as promising as we dreamed it might be. We have come
to understand that embracing stem cell research does not condemn us to
the slippery slope of human cloning.
Since the President's decision, stem cell research funded by the
private sector and by the States has gone ahead across the country. But
it has gone ahead slower than many of us might like in the absence of
crucial Federal funding--fast enough to fill the pages of major medical
journals with exciting new discoveries. But this research has taken
place on a large enough scale at our most important educational
research institutions to be able to tell us it addresses our major
fears. What in the summer of 2001 might have seemed a well-founded
suspicion has completely proven to be unfounded. As Newt Gingrich told
me yesterday, after reversing himself and acknowledging the threat
posed by global warming is both urgent and real, serious legislators
change their stances over time. That is permissible. That is the
product of thinking, the product of additional information and
additional input.
Look at the Senate. Republicans such as John McCain, former majority
leader Bill Frist, the Senator from Utah, Orrin Hatch, who is on the
floor now, have looked carefully at the scientific facts and have
searched their own consciousness. They have all reached the same
conclusion: Opposing stem cell research is the opposite of a pro-life
policy.
Last summer, 63 Senators, Republicans and Democrats alike, and 235
House Members voted in favor of stem cell research. That was a
responsible bill, a consensus bill. It was designed specifically to
address the concerns of lawmakers who are worried about the bioethics--
and appropriately worried, I might add. It is difficult to get 63
Senators to agree on anything more controversial than the sort of
standard fare of America, and it is especially difficult on a
polarizing, emotionally charged issue. But we came together as a
Senate. We hammered out our differences and they came together in the
House, and we arrived at a smart, thoughtful, sensitive piece of
legislation that reflected a consensus and respected our collective
conscience. When we did so, we were confronted by a President who
promised to proceed with great care, whose commitment to deliberation
has calcified into a stubborn refusal to confront reality or re-engage
in a changing debate.

America has evolved on this issue, but the President has stood still.
That is why over an overwhelming bipartisan Senate majority, the
President finally dusted off the veto pen and offered up the first and,
to date, the only veto of his entire Presidency. The President has
signed good and bad legislation--torture bills, pork, giveaways to oil
companies, and tax cuts for millionaires. But when it came to a strong
emerging national consensus on an issue that brings hope to families
across the country, the President chose to shut down the debate and
block Federal funding for scientific research.
Make no mistake, this is a personal issue--deeply personal for each
of us in this Chamber, and for the President. I understand that. I am
confident when the President made his decision about stem cell research
over 6 years ago, he searched his mind and his heart, as all of us who
care passionately about this issue have done. If he vetoes stem cell
research again, that will send a message that this country no longer
intends to be the global leader in scientific knowledge and discovery.
It would send a message to Americans suffering from Parkinson's, spinal
injuries, and countless ailments that their well-being is not important
to us. We are telling these people we could do more to cure you, but we
choose not to. We are telling them help is not on the way.
The current policy is eroding our national advantage on stem cell
research. It is undermining the hopes and dreams of millions of
Americans. We are tying our scientists' hands behind their backs and
holding them back from the possibilities of the future.
We need a Federal policy that builds on the advances being made in
our States and our universities, in our private foundations, and in our
research centers, all of which have proceeded in a thoughtful and
commonsense way to the ethics concerned in this issue. The research now
is already showing tremendous promise. In my State of Massachusetts,
some of the best scientists in the world are working at the Whitehead
Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT and the Harvard Stem Cell
Institute. We are still in the early stages of this line of research,
but there is here the kind of discovery that we are already making.
Let me explain. The Harvard Stem Cell Institute identified cells that
they call ``master cardiac'' stem cells, which is a single cell type
that gives rise to the major cellular building blocks of the mammalian
heart. That discovery rewrote the story of cardiac development and
contributed a significant building block toward what could become
revolutionary new treatments for heart disease. We are already seeing
cures for diseases in our labs.
At the Whitehead Institute, a leading stem cell researcher and his
team used stem cell therapy to cure a mouse suffering from an immune
deficiency disease. As you can see, the research is still in the early
stages, so we cannot say what the immediate results are going to be for
humans. But, rest assured, today's breakthroughs in mice have often
become tomorrow's cures for humans.
Now we can all hope that alternatives to embryonic stem cell research
hold similar promise. But you

[[Page S4327]]

cannot wish away what our scientists are telling us. Research on
embryonic stem cells is incredibly promising, pivotal to this new
field, and not easily sidestepped. Nobel Prize winners past and
present, and most likely future, believe this is the future biology of
medical science.
People of good will and good sense can resolve these complicated
ethical issues without stopping lifesaving research. The country has
led the world in revolutionary discoveries, with our breakthroughs and
our beliefs moving ahead together, symbiotically. Senate passage of
this bill with a veto-proof majority can put us, again, on that path.
We are giving this administration yet another chance to consider a
misjudgment with profound consequences. We are working to create a
framework for ethical, federally funded research. Like the bill passed
last summer, this legislation provides important ethical safeguards by
extending federally funded research only to embryos that are, one,
donated by in vitro fertilization clinics; two, created specifically
for fertility treatment, not for research; three, in excess of
treatment needs and would otherwise be discarded; and four, donated by
treatment-seeking individuals who provided written, informed consent
and were not offered financial inducements. I cannot think of any way
to more effectively and thoughtfully address the ethical issues that
are concerned here.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 2 more minutes. Is that
possible?
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brown). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, what may not have been clear to us
initially--and it should be clear now--it just doesn't make sense to
allow in vitro fertilization to create millions of embryos that will
never become human beings and then prohibit science from using them to
cure sick people and relieve human suffering but to simply discard
those embryos.
Valuing the mysteries and sacredness of human life is something all
of us should do. It underlies every religion on this planet. Stem cell
advocates are no different. Here in the Senate and across this country,
Americans are approaching an ethical consensus which bans human
cloning, which is thoughtful about the use of embryos that would be
discarded, and which respects life and also respects that life by
protecting stem cell research.
We don't have the luxury of patience, not when 100 million Americans
suffer from illnesses that might one day be cured with stem cell
therapy, not when more than 3,000 Americans die from diseases every day
that one day may be made treatable by stem cell research.
If we can get 67 votes out of 100 Senators--4 more than we had last
summer--then we can send the President a veto-proof message. Last
summer, the Senate sent the administration a strong message by passing
a bill that would responsibly fund this research, and the American
people showed their agreement last November when they sent an even
larger majority back to Washington to vote in greater numbers to
support lifesaving scientific research. Sixty-three votes are not
enough. We hope we receive more today so that we can open the doors to
this promising future.
I thank the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the distinguished
Senator from Tennessee, Mr. Corker.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee is recognized
Mr. CORKER. Mr. President, I will probably take more like 5 minutes,
if the Senator from Georgia wants to allocate the time elsewhere.
Mr. President, I thank you for the opportunity to speak today. As you
can tell by my location in the Senate, I am new to the Senate. I spent
a great deal of time, as many people did, over the course of the last 2
years visiting with citizens in our State. I think there is nothing
that touches us in the public arena more than seeing people who have
needs and trying to address those needs. That is the reason many of us
are in the public arena--I hope all of us are in the public arena.
Few of us are untouched by the many illnesses that plague Americans.
I know all of us have people who have diseases, such as diabetes,
various forms of cancers, heart disease, Alzheimer's. I know my own
family has been touched by Alzheimer's disease. My father has it. All
of us are aware of issues that are affecting human beings. We also want
to see breakthroughs take place.
It is amazing, the breakthroughs that are taking place today with
stem cell research--research from adult stem cells, research that is
taking place from matter from amniotic fluids, research that is taking
place from cord blood matter. So there are amazing cures taking place
in America today with this research, and I doubt there is a Senator in
this body--not a Senator in this body--who doesn't support stem cell
research. The issue really comes down to embryonic stem cell research.
Mr. President, I want you to know that over the course of the last 2
years, I spent a tremendous amount of time looking into this issue,
reading white papers, talking to researchers all across America,
visiting embryonic adoption centers where embryos were actually being
adopted and creating human beings. Because of this issue, because of
the ethical divide this issue seems to create for so many Americans, a
tremendous amount of time was put forth by myself and my staff, but
myself firsthand, to reach a conclusion about this issue and to be able
to communicate that to Tennesseans and Americans.
There are four points I have learned about this issue. The Senator
from Massachusetts just spoke. He and I have a very different view on
this issue. What I have learned about this issue is that honorable
people can disagree. Honorable people who truly want to see cures take
place for Americans and for people all across the world can disagree as
to their viewpoint as it relates to embryonic stem cell research.
Again, all of us support adult stem cell research.
The second point I have learned is that there are tremendous
breakthroughs, as I have already mentioned, regarding research that is
taking place with adult stem cells, cord blood stem cells, and amniotic
fluids have matter that is creating stem cells. Tremendous cures are
being created with these stem cells.
The third point is that science is going to absolutely outpace our
ability to deal with this issue. There is no question that even if we
pass legislation today, science is going to continue to outpace us as
it relates to our ability to deal with this fascinating area of
science. But I also believe science and these breakthroughs are going
to allow us to continue to achieve these cures for Americans and for
people all across this world without creating this ethical divide of
destroying human embryos.

So I am here to strongly support and applaud the Senator from Georgia
and the Senator from Minnesota who have put forth the HOPE Act. I am
here to strongly support S. 30, which allows additional research to
take place on stem cells without breaking that divide. I am also here
to voice opposition to S. 5, which actually uses Federal dollars to
destroy human embryos.
Mr. President, I yield back my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time? The Senator from Iowa is
recognized.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, first, I say to my friend from Tennessee,
there is not one dime in S. 5 that would be permitted to be used for
the destruction of embryos--not one dime. That is prohibited by the
Dickey-Wicker amendment. This bill does not override that amendment.
Not one dime in this bill can ever be used for the destruction of any
embryos. I just want to make that very clear.
Mr. President, I yield 20 minutes to my colleague, someone with whom
I have worked on health issues now going back--let me think about
this--almost 13 years, I guess, back to 1993, someone with whom I have
worked very closely on a number of health issues and for whom I have a
great deal of respect for his approach on this issue and so many
others. I yield 20 minutes to the distinguished Senator from Utah, Mr.
Hatch.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah is recognized.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Iowa. I
appreciate the arguments he has been making about this issue.

[[Page S4328]]

Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of embryonic stem cell
research.
First, I plan to vote in favor of both bills that will be considered
today, S. 5, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007, and S. 30,
the Hope Offered through Principled and Ethical Stem Cell Research Act.
I call upon my colleagues to vote in favor of and pass these bills.
And I call upon the President to sign both bills into law.
However, let me make one point perfectly clear while I will be voting
for both S. 5 and S. 30, I believe that S. 5 is clearly preferable to
S. 30. S. 5 permits Federal funding for embryonic stem cell research;
S. 30 does not.
I want everyone to understand that the votes we cast today could
tomorrow mean the difference between a healthy life and one of misery
for many, many Americans.
I commend my good friends and colleagues for their hard work on S.
5--first, Senator Arlen Specter and Senator Tom Harkin, who held over
15 bipartisan hearings on embryonic stem cell research over the last
several years.
Next, I recognize Senators Kennedy, Smith and Feinstein for their
courageous leadership and commitment to this important issue.
And, in the House of Representatives, Representatives Mike Castle and
Diana DeGette must be singled out for their principled leadership on
the companion embryonic stem cell research measure, which was approved
by a strong bipartisan vote.
Each day, the Congress must address consequential events--and even
momentous threats to our Nation--but it is not often that we have the
opportunity to cast a vote that is filled with as much hope and promise
for the future as the embryonic stem cell research bill we are
considering today.
It reminds me of our country's quest for space many years ago, which
was no more than a dream when the effort began. Yet what was only a
vision when it was conceived, yielded wonders beyond anything we could
have imagined.
The American space program has spawned many important new advances.
When I think of space exploration, I ponder the gift of global
positioning technology. I consider the weather mapping that we depend
upon to warn us of impending natural disasters. I marvel at the
revolution of instantaneous worldwide communication.
As a science, embryonic stem cell research today is where the space
program was when we first dreamed of it. When I think of embryonic stem
cell research, I imagine diabetics without insulin pumps. I dream of
patients with Parkinson's Disease who sprint rather than shuffle. I
conceive of patients with spinal cord injury who stand up and walk
again.
I think of 16-year-old Tori Schmanski of Orem, UT, who sustained a
severe brain injury. I imagine Tori going back to the snowboarding and
dancing that she loved. Tori Schmanski's parents flew her to China for
stem-cell therapy. Her father said something that struck me. He said,
``Our hope is that next time we do this, we won't have to go to
China.'' America has long been the world leader in ethical biomedical
research, and we should not lightly cede this ground.
When I consider the potential of stem cell research, I think of
people like 17-year-old Travis Ashton of Highland, UT, whose brain was
injured in a car accident. Today, he is struggling to dribble a
basketball. I hope tomorrow he will be able not only to dribble a
basketball but dunk a couple of baskets as well.
And I think of my great friend, President Ronald Reagan, whose genius
and energy were sapped away in what were to have been his golden years
by the ravages of Alzheimer's disease. I imagine him finishing his days
with his characteristic humor and vitality.
Last year when Congress voted on the Stem Cell Research Enhancement
Act of 2005, Former First Lady Nancy Reagan sent me a letter urging the
Senate to support the bill. Let me remind you what it so poignantly
said:

Dear Orrin:
Thank you for your continued commitment to helping the
millions of Americans who suffer from devastating and
disabling diseases. Your support has given so much hope to so
many.
It has been nearly a year since the United States House of
Representatives first approved the stem cell legislation that
would open the research so we could fully unleash its
promise. For those who are waiting every day for scientific
progress to help their loved ones, the wait for United States
Senate action has been very difficult and hard to comprehend.
I understand that the United States Senate is now
considering voting on H.R. 810, the Stem Cell Research
Enhancement Act, sometime this month. Orrin, I know I can
count on friends like you to help make sure this happens.
There is just no more time to wait.
Sincerely,
Nancy

As we all know, last year, the Senate did approve this legislation,
but President Bush vetoed it.
And while I think we all know how this vote will come out today, it
remains my fervent hope and prayer that President Bush--a person whom I
greatly respect and with whom I share strong belief in the right to
life--will sign this bill into law.
I have received many letters from constituents who ask me, ``Senator
Hatch, how can you support embryonic stem cell research when adult cell
research is so promising?'' They ask, ``Why don't you realize that cord
blood research makes embryonic stem cell research unnecessary?''
My answer is simple. Who among us can know which will yield the
greatest breakthroughs? Who among us dares to predetermine the outcome
by limiting the possibilities of ethical scientific research at the
outset of this new field of research?
The stories I have just related compel me to advocate for all types
of ethical stem cell research--adult, cord blood, amniotic, and
embryonic.
Indeed, it must be recognized that in August, 2001, President Bush
became the first President to support Federal funding for embryonic
stem cell research. The President has my respect and admiration for his
decision. At that time, he announced that 78 embryonic stem cell lines
would be eligible for Federal support. It was a good start.
It was also a decision that recognized discarded embryos can, and
should, be used to advance our Nation's scientific inquiry. That is
fundamentally still the issue before us today.
The President's policy has not lived up to its promise.
In the past 6 years, much has changed. What was once thought to be
over 70 stem cell lines has dwindled. A number of scientists have told
me that in reality the number of usable cell lines has shriveled to
merely a dozen or fewer.
Scientists have told me that these lines are not enough to represent
the general population anyway--they have been genetically distorted by
years of replication. Furthermore, they are contaminated with so-called
animal feeder cells and, therefore, can never be approved for use in
human therapy.
Existing Federal policy has created what I have characterized as
handcuffed science. By this I mean that scientists are forced to go to
extreme lengths to comply with Federal law. When they are able to
scrounge up private funding for fresh embryonic stem cell lines, the
scientists find their hands bound.
They are afraid of violating Federal law by mixing research between
the limited, contaminated, federally sanctioned stem cells and cells
with the new cell lines lawfully developed with non-Federal funds. No
equipment purchased with NIH funds touches the new, lawful cell lines
and the result is that equipment purchased with Federal money lays
underused while limited precious money is used to purchase duplicate
equipment and supplies.
Dr. Linda Kelley is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the
University of Utah. Dr. Kelley told me that the limited number of
currently federally sanctioned cell lines is so unstable that, in her
words, ``You are lucky if you can recover 10 percent of the cells they
send you.'' She said the cells have been reused for so long that they
have degraded and no longer represent the comprehensive human
population.
I do not want Utah's scientists moving to California or America's
scientists moving overseas so they can do their research.
Just as we are a nation that would never want to allow a situation to
exist where American citizens must go abroad for best medical
treatment, we should neither allow nor accept an atmosphere where our
best doctors and

[[Page S4329]]

scientists must go abroad to develop and provide the best medicine.
I do not want U.S. scientists walking away from embryonic stem cell
research because there are too many impediments to pursuing it in our
country for our citizens.
Dr. Marie Cseta is a cell biologist from Emory University and is one
of the many scientists who firmly believe that embryonic stem cells
hold unusual promise. She is unable to send her NIH-funded, post
doctoral fellows to qualified laboratories to learn new procedures
because those laboratories work with the new cell lines. She told me
that the restrictions that current Federal policy places upon her and
her colleagues are, in her words `` . . . so odious that many
scientists just do not try.''
I want scientists to try.
I think we will see after today's vote that most Senators want
scientists to try.
I am sure my friends, neighbors, and constituents in Utah want our
best scientists to try.
In forming my opinions and views on this topic, I met with many
leading experts in the field of science, ethics, law and, yes,
religion. I met with a number of Nobel Laureates including Dr. Harold
Varmus, former Director of the National Institutes of Health; Dr.
Thomas Cech of the Howard Hughes Institute of Medical Research and Dr.
Paul Berg of Stanford University.
I met with other leading experts including: Dr. Curt Civin and Dr.
John Gearhart both of Johns Hopkins University; Dr. Irv Weissman of
Stanford University; and the University of Utah's own Dr. Mario
Capecchi.
Let me tell my colleagues that we have some great scientists in the
State of Utah. In fact, Dr. Capecchi, a leading research professor at
the University of Utah, is widely recognized as one of the true
pioneers of embryonic stem cell research. He has been working on
embryonic stem cell research throughout his 40-year career. He has been
the recipient of the prestigious Lasker Award which is considered the
most prestigious American award in the biomedical sciences. It is often
the case that Lasker Award winners go on to receive Nobel prizes.
When I was home in Utah last week, I spent a lot of time talking to
Dr. Capecchi. I asked him if he could provide me with what he believed
are the top reasons why our government should fund embryonic stem cell
research. He shared the following with me:
1. Potential source of cures. Embryonic stem cell research provides
the potential to cure or ameliorate some of the most devastating and
costly diseases faced by our Nation including diabetes, Parkinson's
disease, and Alzheimer's disease.
2. Embryonic stem cells grow quickly and are versatile. Two inherent
properties of embryonic stem cells, not shared with adult stem cells,
make them especially attractive cells for cell transplantation-based
therapies: i) rapid cell division and ii) versatility.
Rapid cell division is critical if we want to use any stem cells for
transplantation therapy, as we must quickly expand a limited number of
cells to the large mass required for therapeutic effect. Embryonic stem
cells are almost unique in their capacity for rapid growth without loss
of developmental function.
The versatility of embryonic stem cells is truly remarkable. In the
mouse, embryonic stem cells have been unequivocally demonstrated to be
pluripotent, capable of generating every cell type present in the adult
body. Studies in cell culture indicate that human embryonic stem cells
also possess this remarkable pluripotency.
3. Adult stem cells grow slowly. In contrast, adult stem cells divide
slowly and normally require a very specialized and undefined cellular
environment--called a niche--for their survival and growth. For
example, removal of adult intestinal stem cells from their biological
niche leads to their automatic, programmed cell death. Blood stem
cells, obtained from the bone marrow, are among the few adult stem
cells currently in clinical use, but they cannot yet be expanded in
culture without losing their developmental function, and hence their
limited therapeutic utility.
4. Adult stem cells are very restricted in what cell types they can
produce. Whereas embryonic stem cells are extremely versatile in their
capacity to generate different cell types, adult stem cells appear to
range in versatility from quite restricted--for example, blood stem
cells that can generate multiple types of blood cells, but nothing
else--to completely restricted, for example, muscle stem cells that
generate only muscle cells.
5. Many important organs do not have adult stem cells. Many tissues
such as liver, pancreas, and blood vessels do not appear to have a
corresponding adult stem cell population. Therapies of diseases
involving these tissues would therefore not be readily approachable by
adult stem cell-based therapy, but could be approached using embryonic
stem cell-based therapies.
6. The usefulness of existing embryonic stem cell lines is extremely
limited. The approved set of human embryonic stem cell lines,
authorized nearly 6 years ago for federally funded research, is
woefully inadequate. Some of them apparently do not exist at all,
others are embroiled in extensive proprietary agreements and all of
them though suitable for some research purposes, will never be
suitable, due to problems with contamination, for therapeutic purposes.

More importantly, ongoing research--funded by private foundations and
industry, or performed abroad--has brought about improvements in how
laboratories isolate and grow embryonic stem cells. Mouse embryonic
stem cells were first characterized over 25 years ago, yet the cell
lines that researchers use today are far superior to the ones available
5 or 10 years ago. With the hope of further improvements, we continue
to isolate new mouse embryonic stem cell lines.
So long as the Federal funding ban remains in place, the majority of
American researchers cannot make similar progress with human embryonic
stem cells, nor exploit the advances made by others. With the limits
currently in place, American human embryonic stem cell researchers are
in the unfortunate and unique position of being frozen in time, trapped
by the technical limitations of mid-2001, while other disciplines
continue to advance. This makes no sense from a medical or scientific
perspective.
Although today's debate focuses on the use of spare embryos to
develop embryonic stem cell lines, the next two points that Dr.
Capecchi makes center on a different method of producing embryonic stem
cell lines.
For the last three Congresses, Senator Feinstein and I have
introduced legislation that addresses this form of embryonic stem cell
research. Although this issue is not squarely before us today, I hope
that the majority leader will allow us to take up this important matter
sometime this Congress.
7. Somatic cell nuclear transfer as a research tool. A limitation of
IVF embryo-derived stem cells is their potential of rejection by the
patient because of immunological incompatibility. A potential solution
is the generation of ``customized'' embryonic stem cells by somatic
cell nuclear transfer, SCNT, which has been demonstrated in proof of
concept experiments in mice.
While, at present, nuclear transfer using human eggs to generate
customized embryonic stem cells for therapy would be too complex and
too controversial to be applicable for routine transplantation
medicine, it represents an important tool for investigating the
mechanism of converting a somatic cell such as skin cell into an
embryonic stem cell.
We need to learn the ``reprogramming rules'' the egg uses to convert
the adult nucleus into an embryonic state following nuclear
transplantation. One goal of research in this field is to convert a
somatic cell to a pluripotent embryonic stem-cell-like state in culture
without SCNT.
We need to use eggs temporarily to learn how to reprogram the adult
nucleus without the need for human eggs. Progress toward this goal can
only be assured if Federal funding would be able to support research in
this field in the best academic institutions of our country.
8. Embryonic stem cells to study human disease. Because SCNT allows
production of patient-specific embryonic stem cells, this approach
would allow establishing research tools for the investigation of
complex human diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, ALS, or
diabetes in cell culture.

[[Page S4330]]

An embryonic stem cell line derived from such patients would carry in
its genome all genetic alterations that caused the disease. Thus,
differentiating these patient-specific embryonic stem cells in culture
to a cell type that is defective in the patients may provide crucial
insights into the pathology of the disease and may provide a critical
platform to identify drugs that help prevent, ameliorate, or cure the
disease.
9. Lack of government commitment means lack of future researchers.
The brightest young researchers in our country are currently not
engaging in human embryonic stem research because they are aware of its
uncertain future, the low level of commitment by our government to its
support and of the cumbersome restrictions faced by scientists
participating in this research. We are losing the scientists that will
carry this critical research into the future.
10. Health and economic implications. The health and economic
implications of human stem cell research are enormous and other
countries have recognized this potential. They are heavily investing in
embryonic stem cell research. Our country is in grave danger of falling
behind in one of the most promising fields of biomedical research.
Dr. Capecchi gives very compelling reasons for funding embryonic stem
cell research. I believe that all ethically responsible avenues of stem
cell research should be pursued and that is the Congress's obligation
to the American public to see that they all are pursued.
But let me caution that no one should imagine that one bill is a
substitute for the other.
S. 30, introduced by Senator Norm Coleman, directs the Secretary of
Health and Human Services to conduct and support research on
pluripotent stem cells that do not damage a human embryo. It also
specifies work on naturally dead embryos.
But, the concept of alive-but-naturally-dead embryos is based upon
limited research that has not yet been duplicated widely.
It is promising research, but it is no more than that at this stage.
In fact, some scientists are worried that these arrested embryos are
defective and would, therefore, produce defective stem cells. And it is
by no means certain that an arrested embryo can be differentiated from
one that could develop further.
In short, this idea may not pan out.
Recently, there was another flurry of activity around the possibility
that certain cells in amniotic fluid behave similarly to stem cells.
But even Dr. Anthony Atala who characterized these cells has said that
it is a mistake to assume that they are a substitute for embryonic stem
cells.
The vote that counts in the minds of our best and brightest
scientists--and should count for my colleagues in the Senate and the
American public--is your vote for S. 5, the Specter-Harkin bill that
has already passed the House by a broad bipartisan vote. Our leading
scientists, including more than 40 Nobel Laureates, tell us at this
time there is no known scientific substitute for embryonic stem cells.
Yet I understand that the vote I ask you to cast is ethically
troubling for some of my colleagues.
I have a long, proud and strong record as a right-to-life Senator.
I stand against abortion on demand, and I think that Roe v. Wade
should never have been decided the way it was.
As a member and former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I
worked toward a constitutional amendment banning abortion.
In the 108th Congress, I was at the President's side when he signed
the bill banning the barbaric practice of partial birth abortion. I was
chairman of the House-Senate conference committee that finalized the
bill.
So why does a pro-life Senator support embryonic stem cell research?
Because I do not consider a frozen embryo to be a human life until it
is implanted in a woman's uterus. S. 5 allocates Federal research
funding to embryonic stem cells derived from frozen embryos that are to
be discarded. In fact, thousands of such embryos are routinely
discarded each year.
I should explain why frozen embryos exist and why they are discarded.
As part of the fertility treatment process, multiple embryos are
created and only one or a few of those that are created are ultimately
used. The rest can be stored for years in liquid nitrogen. About 11,000
embryos per year are discarded by their donors and could be used for
research.
I see ethics as being on the side of creating human life through
fertility treatments. I see it as trying to cure human misery through
ethical stem cell research as is provided through S. 5.
When I first took this position in 2001, it was over the objection of
some of my constituents in Utah. Utah is a very conservative State.
Since that time, however, the majority of Utahns and the majority of
Americans have come to support the use of Federal funds for embryonic
stem cell research conducted under ethical guidelines.
This year, as in past years, I have had a steady stream of Utahns
with chronic diseases visiting my office urging me to continue to push
for stem cell research. One young man who has been afflicted with
diabetes since youth now has a son with the disease. He urged me to
continue with this fight so that maybe his son might be spared the
ravages of the disease. A woman disabled with multiple sclerosis
earnestly told me to persist. A constituent with Parkinson's disease
told me to do whatever it takes. They all want hope.
NIH support is the bedrock of scientific research in the United
States and really around the world. And without NIH support, embryonic
stem cell research will never reach its full potential.
While constrained by his position in the administration about what he
can and cannot say about the legislation before the Senate, in
testimony before the Congress, NIH Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni recently
made it abundantly clear that--based on consideration of science
alone--embryonic stem cell research presents great opportunities for
scientific advancement. And Dr. Zerhouni is not alone.
As I emphasized, one reason is that the limited and continually
shrinking number of federally sanctioned contaminated cell lines are so
tired that they no longer adequately represent the genetic code of the
larger human family.
A second is that the logistics of investigation are burdensome and
impractical because of the need to separate funding sources for
research with the limited, deficient federally sanctioned stem cell
lines and the newer cell lines lawfully developed within Federal
support.
A third reason is that scientists cannot now use Federal funds for
research on any embryonic stem cell line that they could implant in
humans--these federally sanctioned lines are contaminated with animal
cells.
A fourth reason is the need to be able to bring the fruits of basic
research to the patient. It is one thing to find several hundred
thousand dollars of private money to complete an early stage research
project on stem cell lines in the laboratory. However, when it comes
time for clinical testing, the costs of research are in the millions of
dollars, not the hundreds of thousands of dollars per experiment.
Typically, this kind of private money is not available unless it is
from industry. Clinical research with stem cells will hit the wall
without NIH funding when that time comes.
The private sector will not want to invest millions of dollars into
stem cell lines that we already know will never yield ethical human
treatments. Nor should Congress and the public allow the status quo to
continue.
If we unlock the shackles on our scientists, I believe we can
materially shorten the time between basic and applied research--the
time between the test tube and the patient's bedside. Let me give you
just a few examples of what has been accomplished since the Senate last
debated this issue.
In last October's Nature, biotechnology investigators reported that
they could convert human embryonic stem cells into cells capable of
synthesizing insulin, the missing hormone in diabetics. This work was
conducted on privately funded stem cell lines.
At the University of California, Los Angeles researchers demonstrated
that they could coax embryonic stem cells into becoming T-cells of the
immune system, the missing cell line in AIDS patients.

[[Page S4331]]

And in my own State of Utah, Dr. Raymond D. Lund, a professor of the
Moran Eye Center at the University of Utah, reported that human
embryonic stem cells injected into the eyes of blind rats improved
their vision. This important work was conducted with private funding.
An Israeli team partially funded by the Israel Science Foundation
reported engineering a small piece of heart tissue derived from human
embryonic stem cells that contracted rhythmically, carrying promise for
future cardiac replacement therapies.
Last month, Dr. Dachun Wang and Dr. Rick A. Wetsel at the University
of Texas reported a procedure that differentiates human embryonic stem
cells into the lung cells that are missing from many lung diseases. The
work was funded with a grant from a private donor.
Finally, in a recent Nature Medicine Journal, human embryonic stem
cells delayed the onset of the mouse equivalent of a degenerative brain
disease by 70 percent. The approach described in the article holds
exciting potential for treating dreadful diseases such as ALS and
Alzheimer's disease.
As you can see, there is a lot of promising work being done in the
field of embryonic stem cell research. Unfortunately, due to the
limitations and restrictions placed on the few cell lines eligible for
Federal research assistance, much of most promising work is being done
outside the normal channel of the NIH research network.
Yet with all this progress, is science progressing as fast as it
should? I recently asked this question of an eminent neuroscientist who
directs the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, Dr.
Story Landis.
At the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee's hearing
entitled ``Can Congress Help Fulfill the Promise of Stem Cell
Research,'' committee members heard from scientists, from a young
patient who suffered from diabetes, and from Dr. Landis. I asked Dr.
Landis if NIH funds were made available for research on all ethically
obtained embryos from in vitro fertilization, would the probability of
finding cures for human diseases increase?
Her response was as follows:

Absolutely it would increase. There is no question about
it. We would have a real opportunity. I can give you one
specific example. Huntington's disease is an inherited
disease. It caused a particular kind of nerve cell in the
brain to die . . . If we had embryonic stem cells derived
from discarded embryos that were not implanted, we would be
able to make extraordinary inroads into therapeutics for that
disease.

Much is weighing in the balance on today's vote.
I ask my colleagues to consider carefully the positions they take
today.
In the interests of all those who suffer from debilitating diseases
and hope for deliverance, I urge my colleagues to vote for S. 5.
Let me close by making a point I made to President Bush back in 2001.

In the opening days of your term in office, scientists have
completed the task of sequencing the human genome. While this
accomplishment--the work of many in the public and private
sectors--is of historical significance, it is only the end of
the beginning in a new era of our understanding of the
biological sciences. Over your next eight years in office,
you have an unprecedented opportunity to provide the personal
leadership required to see to it that your Administration
will be remembered by future historians as the beginning of
the end for such deadly and debilitating diseases as cancer,
Alzheimer's and diabetes.

That is what S. 5 is all about--providing a potential new avenue of
research that may lead to treatments and cures for many diseases that
afflict many families across our Nation and the world.
Mr. President, while I have no objections to S. 30, let us not delude
ourselves into thinking it is the best solution to this. Again, while I
will be voting for both S. 5 and S. 30, I believe that S. 5 is clearly
preferable to S. 30. S. 5 permits Federal funding for embryonic stem
cell research, S. 30 does not. S. 5 is the bill that will clearly make
a significant difference in the future of medical research.
I urge all of my colleagues to vote in favor of S. 5.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Eighteen and a half minutes.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I yield 13 minutes to the distinguished
Senator from Oregon, Mr. Smith.
Mr. SMITH. Mr. President, I am very grateful the Senate is
considering the issue of stem cell research today. This debate marks
the culmination of years of work by many of my colleagues and certainly
by myself and a host of dedicated advocates.
I thank Senators Harkin and Specter for their leadership on this
issue, as well as Senators Hatch, Feinstein, and Kennedy. Working
together for almost a decade, the six of us have over the years laid
the groundwork for the Senate to overwhelmingly approve Federal funding
for embryonic stem cell research.
We did this last July but, as we all know, unfortunately, that bill
was ultimately vetoed by the President. That is behind us now, and with
a new Congress comes a new opportunity to revisit this important issue,
the issue of embryonic stem cell research.
I hope the experiences of the past have helped my colleagues to gain
a fresh perspective on this issue. I know they certainly have for me.
Some may view the vote we will take later today on S. 5 and S. 30 as a
one-or-the-other option. In my opinion, that is simply shortsighted.
I intend to vote for both measures. At the end of the day, they both
accomplish the goal of advancing stem cell science in the hopes of
finding cures for debilitating illnesses such as Parkinson's,
Alzheimer's, and diabetes, to name but a few.
S. 5, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007, would allow
Federal dollars to support research on stem cells derived from human
embryos created through in vitro fertilization.
S. 30, the so-called alternative bill, would provide the support for
other means of deriving pluripotent stem cells. In that regard, both
measures deserve the Senate's support. I find it troubling that these
measures should be pitted against one another. Many argue that S. 5 is
a must-pass legislation, and I would tend to agree with them.
But that should not detract from the importance of alternative forms
of stem cell research sanctioned in S. 30. As research on embryonic and
other forms of stem cells like amniotic or the placental therapies is
still in its infancy, we need to support them all to fully realize the
potential they might hold.
Since the Senate last considered stem cell research, we have all had
additional time to reflect on the sensitive issues underlying this
debate. As a pro-life Republican, I initially had some uneasiness with
endorsing this type of research that so heavily relies on human
embryos.
Drawing from my deeply held religious beliefs, scientific evidence,
and countless stories of individuals living with terrible illnesses, I
fashioned my position on the basis that I truly believe it supports the
sanctity of human life.
The real tension surrounding this issue, I believe, pits the
potential medical benefits stem cells hold against the ethical
uncertainties or the religious convictions some of my colleagues might
have with what this kind of research entails. Based upon my personal
struggle with this issue, I now believe any reservations with embryonic
stem cell research are misplaced, especially when one truly considers
the question of when life begins.
For me, it begins with the mother, with the implantation of the
embryo.
I believe the Scriptures provide ample support showing that flesh and
spirit become one within a mother. This is one of womankind's supernal
gifts. I find verses in the Old and the New Testament, in Genesis,
Jeremiah, the Psalms, Job, as well as in the Gospels.
All of these things lead me to feel comfortable with an ethical
conclusion that life begins when flesh and spirit are united in a
mother's womb and not before.
Embryos created as part of the in vitro fertilization process were
intended to provide infertile couples the gift of life, the chance to
become parents. Those that go unused in infertility treatments should
still have the opportunity to give the gift of life either by later
implantation or to those living with debilitating diseases through stem
cell research.
Without being implanted in a mother's womb, an IVF embryo is a group
of

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cells growing in a petri dish. If those cells are stored in a lab for
1,000 years, they have no possibility of developing into anything more
than a group of cells. They remain the dust of the Earth, one of the
building blocks leading to life.
It is the act of implantation within a mother that gives them life.
It is the act of implantation that is the essential missing ingredient
in this debate. So instead of destroying or discarding unused embryos,
we have the opportunity to use them to derive much needed stem cell
lines for the advancement of stem cell science.
It is not more moral to simply throw them away. While many of my pro-
life colleagues may not agree with my position, I know they do support
the intent of embryonic stem cell research; that of finding cures for a
number of chronic diseases and debilitating health conditions. That is
why I still struggle with describing S. 30 as an alternative to S. 5.
It is not an alternative or a substitute, it is a perfect complement.
To fully realize the benefits that all types of stem cell research
offer, I urge my colleagues to vote affirmatively for both measures we
are considering today.
The promise of embryonic stem cell research is very real. Those
suffering from Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, diabetes, cardiovascular
disease, and many cancers believe in that promise, and so do I.
But we have yet to unleash the potential behind this science because
of the restrictions we have placed upon stem cell research. While I
appreciate the President allowing the research to move forward on a
limited number of stem cell lines, we all know that over time those
lines have been degraded, and scientists are in desperate need of new,
uncontaminated lines.
We cannot expect scientists to make progress in developing today's
treatments if we limit them to yesterday's science.
I believe the Federal Government has a vital, moral role to play in
the development of stem cell science to ensure that appropriate ethical
guidelines are followed. It is uncertain where we will end up if
embryonic stem cell research becomes an entirely private sector
venture.
With lack of sufficient funding and ethical boundaries, who knows
where we will wind up? The Federal Government can guide research in the
right direction. I fear if we fail to show up to work on this issue, we
will run into very serious problems in the long run.

Over the last 7 years it has become increasingly clear to me that
being pro-life requires protecting both the sanctity of human life and
the quality of human life. By allowing research on stem cell lines
derived from unused IVF embryos, we could forge a path that would one
day lead to cures for some of mankind's most dreadful medical maladies.
If only one life-improving application of stem cell science comes
from my vote in favor of S. 5, then I believe I have done my job, and
done it correctly; for I have chosen to err on the side of hope,
healing, and health.
I encourage all of my colleagues, even those who have some ethical
reservations or contrary religious feelings on this issue, to do the
same. I have heard some refer to embryonic stem cell research as a
conflict between science and religion. I do not believe that is the
case. One of the greatest qualities and aspects of life in the United
States is our religious pluralism. It is something we see an absence
of, tragically, in too many places around the world.
We do not serve the public well by taking the narrowest theological
position and trying to impose it on public policy. The American
tradition is open enough to include other considerations of ethical
ideas, Scriptural interpretations, and scientific hope.
I am not a scientist, and I am not a theologian. But as I use my
agency to interpret what I know in the Scriptures, and the complexities
of medicine, I have come to the conclusion that we are all made of
dust. Dust thou art and unto dust thou shall return, as the Lord said
to Job.
In that regard, pluripotent stem cells are one of the building blocks
of life, the dust of the Earth. I believe we miss the understanding of
the importance of the spirit, the breath of life, the spirit within
mankind, as the essential ingredient which causes life to begin.
I do not find that religion and science are in conflict in the Senate
today. I believe they are in harmony. I believe we should have a broad
enough view to include the many views that comprise American pluralism.
To that point, Mr. President, I turn to the Scriptures even to find
wisdom that I do not have of myself. In the earliest pages of the Old
Testament, I find this statement:

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and
breathed into him, his nostril the breath of life, and man
became a living soul.

Mr. President, there are two conjunctions. The dust of the ground
``and'' the breath of life ``and'' then man becomes a living
soul. Until you have both, you do not have life.

I cannot end my comments today without mentioning also my own
family's history. It has played a role in shaping my views on embryonic
stem cell research. My mother's name was Jessica Udall. I watched my
grandmother Lela Lee Udall die of Parkinson's. I watched my uncle
Addison Udall die of Parkinson's. I watched my cousin, former
Democratic Presidential candidate and Arizona Congressman, Morris K.
Udall, die of Parkinson's. To watch people die of such a malady is to
instill in one's heart a desire to err on the side of health, hope, and
healing. We will all die, but no one should have to die as they died.
I yield the floor and urge my colleagues to vote for both of these
measures. They are complementary. They are headed in the same
direction. They are not putting science and faith at odds with one
another.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Casey). Who yields time?
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I yield 15 minutes to the distinguished
Senator from Florida, Mr. Martinez.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida is recognized.
Mr. MARTINEZ. Mr. President, this is indeed a difficult issue and
debate. I respect so much my colleague from Oregon. I know he speaks
with passion and heart as he deals with these contentious but important
issues. I must express some disagreement with him, while I agree with
most of what he said.
The issue of stem cells is a vital and emotional one, and we need to
deal with it carefully as we move forward in the Senate.
The embryonic stem cell debate stimulates some of us to defend the
inherent human desire to make discoveries and to build on them;
likewise, this debate galvanizes others of us who defend human life and
believe it should be valued in all its forms. The engineered creation
or destruction of a human embryo for the sake of scientific advancement
cannot be the answer to any of our ever-growing challenges.
In this great country of ours, and around the world, there are many
suffering from debilitating conditions and ravaging diseases such as
multiple sclerosis, diabetes, and Alzheimer's. These people are in need
of medical treatment. Thanks to the brilliant minds and innovative ways
of doctors and scientists across the globe, many medical treatments are
now available. We can credit advances in stem cell research with this
expanding treatment.
Stem cell research holds tremendous opportunities for our society to
help treat and cure people's diseases and illnesses; and some would
like to extend the success found through federally funded adult stem
cell research to embryonic research. They have proposed that we harvest
these human embryos--which were created with the knowledge that many of
them would be destroyed--to be used for research.
While I, and others, understand the great need, we also know that
there has to be a better way. In fact, I know there is. That is what I
want to discuss today.
The legislation currently being considered will direct Federal
taxpayer dollars specifically for the destruction of human embryos to
develop cells that might lead to treatments for various health
problems. This raises moral objections with me because of my deeply
held religious beliefs.
We are currently funding research on nonembryonic stem cells derived
from adult stem cells, amniotic cord blood or placenta sources. These
have proven their ability to target many, if not eventually all, of the
conditions expected to be addressed through embryonic stem cell
research.

[[Page S4333]]

The University of Florida has one of the top five adult stem cell
research centers in the world and their findings are already making a
difference.
At the University of Florida, researchers are making great headway
with stem cell research. They have in the works treatments for heart
disease, a cure for diabetes, and preventions for diabetic eye
diseases. Additionally, researchers at the University of Florida are
making significant strides on the path toward reversing adult
blindness, treating neurological conditions, and rebuilding human brain
cells. Researchers in Gainesville are also leading the world in
identifying cancer stem cells a primary step toward identifying
therapies to cure various forms of cancer.
It is worth noting that all of these advances have a vital common
thread; each of the aforementioned breakthroughs came about thanks to
nonembryonic stem cells.
At the end of 2005, President Bush signed a bill that aims to further
develop our Nation's cord blood inventory to allow for increased
availability of existing and future stem cell treatments; and I was
very proud to have supported this legislation.
As my colleagues know, this legislation made its way through Congress
with tremendous success. The House of Representatives passed it with
only one dissenting vote, and in the Senate it passed it unanimously.
The Stem Cell Therapeutic and Research Act of 2005 created a new
Federal program to collect and store cord blood. In addition, the law
expands the existing bone marrow registry to include cord blood.
New programs utilizing cord blood, such as the recently created
CORD:USE Center at the Winnie Palmer Hospital in my own home State of
Florida, are building on this valuable and expanding foundation. These
programs are advancing science without compromising morality.
Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women and Babies in Orlando is now able to
contribute a diverse and increased supply of cord blood. This is
reassuring news for the thousands of people who would otherwise die
unnecessarily each and every year were it not for the large,
genetically-diversified stem cell bank that is now available. The uses
of cord blood are fascinating and they speak of breakthroughs.
Stephen Sprague, one of the first adults to receive a stem cell
transplant from umbilical cord blood, recently visited Winnie Palmer
Hospital and its cord blood bank to express his gratitude for what they
are doing. Stephen was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia in
1995, and when chemotherapy and other treatments did not work, and a
match for a bone marrow transplant could not be found, he was informed
that essentially nothing more could be done. Luckily, Stephen's
oncologist was able to enroll him in one of the first clinical trials
using umbilical cord blood.
A wonderful mother agreed to donate her placenta; from that, the
lifesaving cord blood was collected. Ten years after receiving the stem
cell transplant, Stephen remains completely cancer-free. Not only this,
but before his cord blood transplant, Stephen was an insulin-dependent
diabetic. Following the transplant, Stephen has not needed to use
insulin; through taking only oral diabetic medications, his sugar
levels have remained normal.
So, not only was Stephen's life saved by the transplant, his quality
of life was improved. It is no wonder that Stephen has now dedicated
his life to telling his cord blood story of hope to patients and
mothers who can also give the gift of life through the donation of
their cord blood.
Umbilical cord blood stems cells have now been used in thousands of
patients requiring a potentially lifesaving stem cell transplant and
with good results.
The collection of these cells from the delivery of a healthy newborn
baby can result in a stem cell transplant desperately needed to save
someone else's life. Essentially, new life is helping to stimulate more
life.
This allows us to help countless people in need without the moral
dilemma presented by the embryonic alternative which, from my
perspective, is no true alternative.
Cord blood is currently being used to treat nearly 80 diseases.
Adult stem cells have made, and will continue to make, a recognizable
contribution to helping those with leukemia, sickle cell disease, and
other potentially fatal illnesses and conditions.
Proponents of embryonic stem cell research say they want to make
available for research only those embryos that are, in their words,
``unwanted.'' One of my colleagues recently asserted, ``If these
embryos were going to create life, we wouldn't be supporting research
on them.
Yet, there is proof that these embryos are living things and that
they are wanted. Yes, these embryos can, and are, growing into fully
formed babies. Known as ``snowflake babies,'' these babies are born
from adopted embryos--excess embryos from successful in vitro
fertilization parents that are donated and adopted by a couple where
fertilization techniques were forgone or unsuccessful.
To date, 133 snowflake babies have been born, with nearly another two
dozen on the way.
Had these--in the words of the critics, ``unwanted'' embryos--been
tossed aside, human life would have literally been discarded.
Many Americans agree that we need to move forward on this issue with
prudence, and in a way that respects and values human life. As we stand
to balance our interests in helping those in need without destroying
human life, there is a good piece of legislation being considered that
I want my colleagues to consider.
Under the HOPE Act, no living embryo would be damaged or harmed for
the sake of research. What the HOPE Act would do is allow scientists
for the first time to apply for Federal funds to perform research on
embryos that have died naturally during the in vitro process. For those
hoping to find a cure through embryonic stem cell research, this would
be a modest and principled step toward achieving that goal.
It would also be the right step to take, because it is the only
option that opens up new frontiers without damaging human life; a move
in this direction would not detract from the real results we have seen
through federally-sponsored adult stem cell research. I encourage my
colleagues to strongly consider voting in favor of the HOPE Act.
We must be dedicated only to research which preserves and protects
lives. Adult stem cells hold great promise, have had more proven
success in lab trials and actual applications, and they do not require
the destruction of human life. This is where our Federal funding should
remain focused.
At this time, efforts to federally fund a different area would siphon
money from proven research.
If it is possible to simultaneously defend human life and help others
in need, why on earth would we not do it? Why wouldn't that be the
better option? We know it is possible to do both at the same time. It
seems to me to be the reasonable thing to do. That is why I urge my
colleagues today to support the HOPE Act, to support a way of
continuing to advance the frontiers of research while at the same time
avoiding the troublesome and meddlesome moral dilemmas that funding for
embryonic stem cells would present.

There is an option. There is an alternative. There is an opportunity
to advance stem cell research of the embryonic type, knowing we have
already had great success with adult stem cells, with cord blood, and
all of the other usages, but at the same time not tampering with the
moral dilemma we would have to cross if we are destroying embryonic
life in order to have stem cell research in that direction.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.
Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Florida and
my colleague from Oregon as well. I want to address a couple of issues
in response to some of the statements that have been made and also get
us back to what we are discussing.
On S. 5, the central issue is, will we sanction the destruction of
nascent human life with Federal taxpayer dollars? There is currently no
prohibition

[[Page S4334]]

against embryonic stem cell research in this country. Any private group
in Illinois or Kansas or Pennsylvania that wants to develop an
embryonic stem cell line can do so. There is no prohibition. The
question is, will we use Federal taxpayer dollars to destroy human life
to develop additional stem cell lines? That is what S. 5 is about.
The second point is, if we want to talk about cures, which I believe
that is what the debate should be centered on, is it appropriate to
divert taxpayer dollars from adult stem cell research, from cord blood
research, from placental research, from amniotic fluid research into
these areas of highly speculative embryonic stem cell research that has
not produced results to date and is unlikely to produce results in the
near future, if at all. If it does produce results, it is going to lead
us toward human cloning, because we are not going to have a genetic
match on the embryonic stem cell line. You are going to need a genetic
match so you will have to develop human cloning to get a genetic match
to produce the cure you want.
Cloning is not on the table today, but that is what this moves us
toward, because that is what is going to have to happen, if this will
ever work. But it doesn't need to go that route. I want to get us back
on those central questions.
Let's talk about the facts on these questions. We have invested
heavily as a country in embryonic stem cell research. We have invested
in adult stem cell research. We have invested nearly $613 million on
embryonic stem cell research. In total, since 2002, $613 million
invested in embryonic stem cell research. So to say that we are not
funding, we are not doing work in this area, is false. We have invested
a considerable amount of work and effort in this field.

Now, individuals are saying: OK, yes, you have put money into this
field, but the lines on which you allow research are contaminated. I
wish to draw attention to this article from Nature magazine--excuse me.
I want to get this one up. This article: ``Bush Stem Cell Line
Contamination is Exaggerated.'' This is from a CEO of a stem cell
company:

So the stuff you hear published--

I am reading the quotation--

--that all of these lines are irrevocably contaminated with
mouse materials that could never be used in people--hogwash.
If you know how to grow them, they're fine.

That is in an article where one of the key individuals, the CEO of a
stem cell company, is saying that. So we have $613 million that is in
human and nonhuman embryonic stem cell research. The idea that the
lines are contaminated is hogwash. They are not contaminated. They are
useful. They are being used. The research is taking place. So we have
this. We have $613 million going into this area since 2002. One would
reasonably expect we ought to have some results after over half a
million dollars going into the field in this period of time and a lot
of efforts from the scientific community. We have known about embryonic
stem cells for 25 years.
Indeed, the magazine Nature in 2006 marked the 25th anniversary of
the two papers reporting the first isolation of mouse embryonic stem
cells--a 25-year celebration. So we have known about embryonic stem
cells for 25 years and in humans for the last 10 years. We have been
able to research on them in lab animals for the last 25 years. That is
an exciting development which took place a quarter of a century ago. We
have invested heavily--$613 million since 2002. We have put a lot of
money into this. We put a lot of scientific effort into this.
What do we have? That should be a reasonable question all my
colleagues would ask. All my colleagues would say: Well, OK. We have
talked about this, we have put money in it, we have discovered it, and
we have put a lot of our best scientific minds into this field. What do
we have? The results for adult versus embryonic: We have invested more
in adult than we have in embryonic, but it is not an inconsequential
amount that we have put into embryonic--$613 million. This chart shows
the current human applications in the two fields of adult versus the
embryonic. For allergy and infectious disease, embryonic stem cell
research and human applications: zero. We have 15 in the adult field.
Cancer Institute: zero in ESCR, 26 in adult. Child Health Institute:
zero here for embryonic, 8 in adult. Diabetes and Digestive: zero for
embryonic, three in the adult field. Eye Institute: one adult, zero
embryonic. Zero embryonic, zero embryonic, zero embryonic in each of
those fields. You can see what we have been able to do in the adult
field by the investment we have there.
So from just a sheer practicality standpoint--we have known about
this for 25 years, and we have put $613 million into it. We have zero
human clinical applications today taking place. We have over--and here
I want to show an adjusted chart. I am sorry this is one we have had to
paper over, but just yesterday we had juvenile diabetes on our board
for adult stem cell application--one of the big ones. This affects a
lot of people. It is one that a number of people in this body are
strongly interested in, deeply interested in.
I just read to my colleagues this morning from the Chicago Tribune
about this adult stem cell work treating juvenile diabetes where an
individual with their own--this is type 1 diabetes--treating an
individual with their own stem cells at Northwestern University. Here
is a quote from a researcher who was reviewing it from Harvard Medical
School:

Their results look better than anything I have seen so far.

Type 1 diabetes. We added it, gladly, to the board today. Seventy-
three different human applications we have in adult stem cells. Cord
blood. We don't have amniotic fluid yet developing, which I think we
should start banking the amniotic fluid from the placenta because of
the rich stores of stem cells, but we haven't quite started that yet
today. So we have put in money in adult and we have put money in
embryonic. We have a lot of results in adult.
I held this up for my colleagues yesterday, but I hope they get a
chance to look at it again. This is the front page of the research
findings in the adult fields we have. It is about a 4-inch binder. That
was accumulated as of April 2006--last year. We did an addendum from
June 2006 to March 2007. These are the findings. These are the
successful results in the adult cord blood field that we have. I don't
have my empty binder to show what we have on embryonic stem cell. It is
a legitimate question, just a legitimate question about what we should
be investing in that is yielding results in the adult versus embryonic
field that is taking place.
There is the tumor problem. My colleague from Utah was saying we can
get over this tumor problem which is taking place. Unfortunately, I
have a stack--and I put it into the Record yesterday--of 10 research
papers, and that was really just a sampling of the papers where the
embryonic stem cells are producing tumors. This is real. It is
significant. It is not going away, these tumor-formation problems with
embryonic stem cells.
This is in a publication called ``Stem Cells'': ``The presentation of
the insulin gene could be demonstrated only when the cells
differentiated in vivo into teratomas''--into tumors. These are tumors
which are taking place. This is just one of a stack of research papers
saying this is a problem. It is a difficulty we have.

Let's talk about patients again because, to me, that is what we
really have to get to--the bottom line. We have to bring this back to
the patients.
We now have this exciting development which is taking place with type
1 juvenile diabetes. Unfortunately, it is taking place in Brazil
instead of the United States. I wish we were having the researchers
doing this in the United States. I guess they--whether they are being
attracted overseas to do adult stem cell work and not in the United
States--but this was Northwestern University which was doing this in
Brazil.
I want to look at Parkinson's. One of my colleagues raised the issue
of Parkinson's, which is a very difficult, terrible disease that
confronts and confounds us as a society and as individuals. I wish to
point out to my colleagues an individual who came to testify in 2004
who was a Parkinson's patient and testified about his treatment with
his own stem cells that was taking place, a Parkinson's patient, Dr.
Dennis Turner, and he was Parkinson's free for a period of 5 years. We
tried to get him in to testify a number of different times. We had
trouble. He was

[[Page S4335]]

out doing African safaris after his stem cell treatment as he was doing
so well from it.
My point is that we have tried this. We have tried it aggressively.
We have tried it ethically to say: OK, let's try embryonic stem cell
work on lines where a life-and-death decision has already been made.
That was the President's determination in 2001. He was saying: We don't
know at this point in time where this science will lead us. Let's try
it on these ethical lines because somebody has already made the life-
and-death decision. Let's put money into it. Let's start in the
nonhuman area first because we want to develop this in the animal
models, which is clearly the right way to go. Let's invest heavily in
it, which I noted in the earlier chart where I pointed this out, the
amount of animal trials, the money that has been put into animal trials
on embryonic stem cell work--in 2006 alone, $110 million; $481 million
for 2002 through 2006--trying to find out: Is there a place? Is there a
way? Can we make this work? We continue to have this tumor problem
which keeps coming up in almost all of the studies. Yet we are saying:
Let's try it on human embryonic and these lines that have already been
developed, and we still are not getting the results. So why would we
continue to fund in this area?
Now we want to expand the funding in this area and we want to expand
the lines and we want to--not only go there, we want to cross the big
moral divide that many of us have different opinions on but all of us
have to say is a profound question: the use of taxpayer dollars to fund
the destruction of young human life. We are all troubled about that.
One way or the other, we are all troubled about that. That is the
question on this particular bill and why it is so divisive. We all want
cures. I think people are troubled about the lack of scientific results
in one area and the fact that we are now at, in clinicaltrials.gov.,
1,422 human clinical trials now going on, being recruited for or no
longer recruiting for using adult stem cell work right now. So this is
going on. It is going on well. We are not seeing any of it in the
embryonic.
Now we want to take another step. We want to use taxpayer dollars. We
want to destroy young human life. We want to create more embryonic stem
cell lines. Never mind that it hasn't worked to date. Never mind that
we are getting a lot of results in this other field. Never mind that a
good portion of our electorate finds this ethically very troubling. We
are going to do it. We are going to go with it. We think we ought to do
it.
I don't think this is a wise move. I don't think it is wise
practically. I don't think it is wise ethically in spite of the
thoughts others might have. Ronald Reagan said: If you didn't know if
somebody was alive or dead, you wouldn't bury them. If you weren't
sure, you wouldn't bury them, just as a commonsense thought.
My colleague from Oregon did a very good discussion of the ethical
issues here, yet I could even detect in his thoughts that this is a
troubling question. It is a tough one. So if we are not sure if it is
alive or dead, would you bury them? No, you wouldn't. And if we have a
moral question about this and we have a route where we can use this
$613 million to get treatments for people like Dennis Turner, whom I
put up here, and where we have had some successes, if we can get
treatments for diabetes that are being developed by Northwestern
University--but for some reason, we are not having enough interest here
to do them here, we are having to do them in Brazil. I want people to
get treatments. I want Parkinson's treatment to take place. We have a
route to do this. We are not unlimited on money resources in the health
care field. I think we should invest more in the health care field. We
have a route to go here. We have a route that can use the resources. If
we are at 1,422 clinical trials now, my guess is there would be a lot
more we could try.
I put up pictures of people here yesterday who are having to go to
Portugal for spinal cord injury treatment. I want to put a picture back
up here again. She wonders why we couldn't do this here.
I might also note to my colleagues that it is critical that this is
done quickly. They are finding in these early research results that the
sooner you can get the treatment for a spinal cord injury, the more
likelihood of success. So how many people here can afford to fly to
Portugal for the treatment, and how much better would it be if this
were done in Chicago or in Kansas City where people could go in this
country? This lady from central Illinois was having to go to Portugal.

We are finding this in the diabetes area. They are saying the sooner
the treatment is taking place--and this is common sense to most of us
as well--we know that the sooner you catch something, the more
likelihood you have success if you get quick treatment. Should we be
forcing people, then, to go to Brazil and Portugal and Thailand to get
these adult stem cell treatments, many of which were developed in the
United States, being done by U.S. researchers, and now are being
conducted abroad? Why? I understand we are all after this goal of
treatments, and I would hope--and I give that to my opponents, that is
what they are after as well--they see this hope and promise.
I can't cross the ethical boundary they have been able to cross. I
find that each of these lives--and here, I am not quoting from a
religious source; I am quoting from a biology textbook, an embryology
textbook, 1996 human embryology textbook that says this about when life
begins, not talking about the theology but the biology. It says:

Although life is a continuous process, fertilization is a
critical landmark, because under ordinary circumstances, a
new genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed.

The Presiding Officer wouldn't be here if he was destroyed as an
embryo. If we have somebody in the future who in this body--I want to
show Hannah--who was in this body who was created--or, excuse me, was
started in an IVF clinic, was a frozen embryo at some point in time,
she is destroyed as a frozen embryo, she isn't going to be here as a
U.S. Senator. This life is a continuum. We all know this. This is not
something which is new to anybody. Here is man who is a snowflake baby,
a frozen embryo, who was adopted. We have another route to go on these
frozen embryos. We could really push an adoption technique. If she is
destroyed at this early phase, she obviously isn't here at a later
phase. We know that. We know what the embryology textbook says, and we
know each of us started out as an embryo, so why would we do this? I
understand people are saying: Well, because we want cures. And I do,
too. We have an ethical route to go on the cures. We have a route which
is producing enormous successful results and one which is producing no
results.
Now, maybe it will, in a decade or two, over large U.S. expenditure,
over a great ethical divide that we all are troubled about, and then we
will expand into human cloning to be able to get a genetic match,
because it will have to. Otherwise, if you do this with embryonic stem
cells and implant them and the genetic type doesn't match up with that
of the body, you are going to have to have immunosuppressants being
used all your life. Is it likely we are going to continue that route?
No. We are obviously going to have to do human cloning, develop young
human clones that genetically match the individual being treated. You
are going to have to harvest thousands, if not millions, or hundreds of
thousands of women's eggs to get the human eggs to develop the clones.
Do we want to go there with women? You are probably going to have to
incentivize and pay women in poorer countries to get the human eggs to
develop the clones that genetically match so you can implant them. This
leads down several paths we don't want to go. So why would we start
down there if we don't want to go there and we have an ethical route in
which to go?
I plead with my colleagues that we don't need to do this. We don't
need to jump over this ethical divide, and we don't need to ignore this
definition. We don't need to create a legal fiction that, yes, it is
alive but it is not a life, which we are doing now with this
discussion. We don't need to go back to the old debate of treating
human life as property and that you can patent it and own it and
manipulate it, and treat it for your own purposes. We have been there
before. We have always regretted

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it. Why would we do that now? We don't need to go there. I say to my
colleagues, let's not go there. Let's go this route we can all agree
on. Let's do amniotic fluid banking. Let's do banking of those stem
cells and create more treatments. Let's invest more heavily in the
adult stem cell field so we can create and find those cures. Let's have
treatments done in the United States and not force people to travel
overseas to get these treatments. We don't need to go there.
We don't need to get women into a position to pay them to harvest
their eggs. We don't need to go down the route of human cloning,
creating life for our own purposes. We have done that before and have
deeply regretted it.
This is a turning point for us. I have no doubt how the vote will
come out today. It will be in favor of S. 5. I think that is
regrettable. I believe the President when he says he is going to veto
it. I hope he does. I will be strongly in support of him doing that.
Instead of having a culture that looks at using life, let's have a
culture that values life, that sees every life as dignified, beautiful,
sacred, a child of a loving God, not to be used for other purposes but
has dignity because of who it is, because of the beauty of who it is.
What is wrong with that? Let's find cures, and we can do it.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
The Senator from Georgia is recognized.
Mr. ISAKSON. Will the Chair advise us of how much time remains.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia controls 14 minutes.
The Senator from Iowa controls 6\1/2\ minutes.
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, the Senator from Illinois will speak next
and he told me he needed extra time. In the spirit of cooperation, I
will be glad to yield 5 of our minutes to the Senator from Illinois so
he will have 11 minutes, and then I will conclude. Is that fair?
Mr. HARKIN. Yes. We will yield 5 minutes to the Senator.
Mr. ISAKSON. You have 6 minutes left. I am giving him 5 and I will
take a closing. Is that fair?
Mr. HARKIN. That sounds good to me.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Georgia for his
gracious gesture. I also thank my colleague from Iowa, Senator Harkin,
along with Senator Specter, for introducing this bill on stem cell
research.
Some important things have been said on the Senate floor today.
Senator Smith of Oregon made an exceptionally moving statement on this
issue. I thank him for sharing his views. This is a tough issue. It is
not easy. I totally respect those who see it differently than I do,
including the Senator from Kansas. They are trying to apply to this
important political debate their own conscience. That is an important
thing in this business, that we bring our conscience to the Senate
Chamber. I know, as most people do, that as we meet and debate this
issue on the floor of the Senate, the lives of Americans continue. All
across America, in sterile laboratories, there are doctors and
scientists at work today trying to help loving couples create human
life. These are men and women, husbands and wives, who want a child
and, because of some physical problem, they cannot conceive. So they
spend enormous sums of money--thousands of dollars--on the chance that
in a little glass dish in a laboratory life can be created that will
end up being the child they will love for the rest of their lives. It
is a beautiful story of love that is repeated every day in America in
these laboratories. I have a friend who recently had a baby girl--2
weeks ago. Eight days after she was born, I was giving her a bottle. I
thought I had lost all those talents, but they came back to me. My wife
was admiring her and telling the mom how proud we were. She talked
about going through this process and how when they went into this
laboratory and looked at all of the possible embryos that could lead to
the birth of the child, they picked the healthiest and strongest ones,
naturally.
But other embryos were not chosen. What happens to those? At the end
of the day, what happens to those that are not chosen to end up
becoming a baby? They are thrown away, discarded. Now, Senator
Brownback has referred to these as ``nascent'' human life, young human
beings. I see this a little differently. I cannot understand how we can
condone legally a process that will end up at the end of the day with
these embryonic stem cells being thrown away and discarded, when we
know if those same stem cells that are about to be thrown away are
given, under appropriate guidelines, with strong ethical standards, to
laboratories, they could lead to cures for serious illnesses. Is it
better morally to throw them away or is it better morally to use them
in a positive way to enrich and save human life? That is what this
debate comes down to, as far as I am concerned.

I have many friends and there isn't a family in America that hasn't
been touched by Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, spinal cord injuries, ALS, or
diabetes. We all know the stories. That is part of American family life
today. When you are a parent of a child who suffers from one of these
illnesses or diseases, the first thing you want to know is: Doctor,
what can be done? Is there a cure? Is there a place I can take my
daughter to where they are going do surgery or a procedure--something--
to save her from this disease? That is the first question a parent
asks.
Because President Bush decided over 4 years ago to close down Federal
funding in this area of research, it limits the opportunity to find
those cures. The President has said he is asserting his moral belief,
his ethical position on this issue. Well, everybody brings their moral
and ethical positions to these issues, but you have to ask the larger
question: Is it right for the President to impose on all of the
families in America who are afflicted with diseases his moral and
ethical views?
I think what Senator Harkin has done is more reasonable. He has said
we will have strong ethical guidelines for this kind of research. No
one is going to make a dollar off this. You cannot direct this research
toward any person. This is strictly scientific, closely guarded, with
strong ethical guidelines. Senator Isakson has come up with an
approach, too, to use a different form of these cells. I also applaud
his approach. Let us try everything we can ethically find that moves us
forward toward finding cures. That is what this should be about. If you
believe the embryos not used in in vitro fertilization are human life,
as described here, I think you have a moral obligation to outlaw in
vitro fertilization because, frankly, at the end of the day these
``nascent'' human lives will be destroyed. We know that. But you have
not heard that suggestion. Those opposing stem cell research are not
opposing in vitro fertilization; they say go forward with that, knowing
the choice would be made to discard the stem cells rather than use them
for medical research. I don't follow that logic. I think it is morally
consistent for them to oppose embryonic stem cell research and prohibit
in vitro fertilization. But they have not gone that far.
We have tough choices ahead of us in this bill. I think they are
obvious choices. We understand what Senators Harkin and Specter have
done. They open the door for funding Federal research in this area. I
am glad the Governor of Illinois found money to initiate this research
in Illinois. California and many other States are also doing this. Why
are we doing it State by State, not as a national Government, as we do
all medical research? The President doesn't view this the same as other
people. He used his veto pen once as President and that was to veto
stem cell research. I think that is inappropriate.
As I get into this debate, I think about a lot of people I have met
who are victims of multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, ALS, cancer, and
spinal cord injuries. I think about visiting the Heinz VA Hospital
yesterday and seeing a quadriplegic who has been bedridden since the
Korean war. Imagine that, if you will. I think about those who have
suffered spinal cord injuries who want the chance, the possibility,
that this research will allow them to lead a more complete and full
life. I also think of my colleague from the House of Representatives,
Lane Evans. He came to Congress in 1982 as a wonderful, great young
man, a Marine Corps veteran of the Vietnam era. He had to give up his
congressional career last year because of Parkinson's. It got

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to the point where he could not continue his official duties. He used
to come to the floor and beg for this bill to pass so others suffering
from Parkinson's would have a chance.
I dedicate my vote in support of this bill in support of Lane Evans,
the veterans, and so many others who are counting on us to move this
research forward. Dr. Elias Zerhouni, the Director of the NIH, stated
our Nation would be better served if federally funded scientists had
access to embryonic stem cells for research. He separated himself from
the Bush administration's official position. He said:

It is not possible for me to know how we can continue the
momentum of science and research with the stem cell lines we
have at NIH that can't be funded. From my standpoint as
director of the NIH, it is in the best interest of our
scientists, our science, and our country that we find ways
and the nation finds a way to go full speed across adult and
embryonic stem cells equally.

I am not going to argue against research using cord blood, adult stem
cells, the type of stem cells described by Senator Isakson in his bill.
But I think we have a moral obligation to the men and women who are
counting on us to open this research to find cures. This is our chance,
with passage of this bill.
I will vote in favor of both S. 5, the Harkin bill, and S. 30, the
Isakson bill, to support all ways of deriving stem cells in a positive
way to save lives. If you are in favor of human life and making it
better, this is your chance. What matters most in this debate is that
we aim to make good on the promises we vowed to keep. Let's support the
research that can lessen so much pain for so many and support S. 5.
I reserve the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I will be brief. I will take a portion of
the remainder of our time and yield back the rest. I compliment Senator
Durbin on his excellent remarks. Referring back to Senator Dorgan's and
Senator Smith's speeches and so many other speeches, I think this has
been a terrific debate.
I compliment the Senator from Iowa tremendously. We all gained a
great deal of education. I think, with rare exception, we have seen
exhibited a passion to further embryonic stem cell research. The
questions are not if that is what we should do but how we go about
doing it.
What I have tried to do, and Senator Harkin and I had a great
exchange last night when we educated one another on our positions, but
what I tried to do is open a door that already existed, a door that
brought about 5 of the 21 embryonic stem cell lines that are currently
under NIH approval. But as Senator Harkin and others have stated, those
lines have now been experimented on for 5\1/2\ years, using mice, they
have developed pollution or less-than-quality lines. It is time for us
to find a way to further the science, to reach out for those
discoveries and do so. S. 30, which I am here to advocate for, affords
that opportunity because it allows the NIH to invest future funds in
embryonic stem cell research on embryos derived from Level III Gardner
principle remainders and in vitro fertilization, arrested embryos, as
they are referred to in some cases, dead embryos as referred to in
other cases, but in all cases embryos that are no longer going to
become a life but do generate and contain pluripotent embryonic stem
cells.
In the end, I feel that approach satisfies the questions raised at
the White House and affords us an opportunity of a bill that will be
signed by the President and does what everybody on this floor supports,
with rare exception, I believe, or maybe no exception once done, and
that is the expansion and the extension of the research.
I end where I began with my remarks a minute ago. I compliment
Senator Harkin and others who have spoken and the advocacy that has
been here today and the level and quality of this debate on this
subject. I look forward to this afternoon and the remaining 3 hours as
we lead up to the votes.
I guess I would say the same thing the Senator from Iowa would say.
If any Members want to speak this afternoon, it is time to let us know
now rather than later because we will have 3 hours equally divided
between four different groups.
With that said, I yield back the remainder of my time.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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