[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 12962]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



        RESEARCH MONEY SHOULD GO TOWARD ADULT STEM CELL RESEARCH

  (Mr. WELDON of Florida asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, prior to coming to the United 
States Congress, I practiced internal medicine for 15 years, including 
treating many patients with diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, and 
Parkinson's disease. For that reason, I was very interested in this 
issue of stem cell research.
  I have reviewed the medical literature on this issue. Today, most of 
the people advocating for the use of embryonic stem cells are bench 
researchers who like to use them because they tend to proliferate very 
nicely in the U.S. culture. That very same property makes them very 
problematic in using them in clinical applications.
  There is today the use of adult stem cells in treating diseases. 
There is no use of embryonic stem cells in treating any diseases. 
Indeed, there is not even an animal model where we can take a rat with 
a disease and treat it with an embryonic stem cell.
  Using embryonic stem cells in clinical applications is very 
problematic for the very same reason that the bench researchers like to 
use it, the cells tend to proliferate and behave like malignancies. It 
is not only ethical to use adult stem cells, it makes the most sense, 
and it is where the research money should be going.

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