[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 15]
[House]
[Pages 20620-20621]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           STEM CELL RESEARCH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Weldon) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I come from the Sunshine State of 
Florida, and I rise tonight to shed a little sunshine, speak out some 
truth regarding the facts on stem cell research and specifically 
President Bush's position on stem cell research. And I would like to 
highlight some of the inaccuracies, misstatements and lack of candor 
that is coming from presidential candidate John Kerry.
  Senator Kerry's statements are notable for their sweeping inaccuracy. 
And as a physician who has formerly and still does take care of 
patients suffering from diseases like Alzheimer's and diabetes 
mellitus, I am very concerned that these statements are creating a 
false hope on the part of many people who suffer from these conditions. 
And, further, I am very disturbed by the fact that it appears as though 
the Senator is trying to exploit their suffering for his own personal 
political gain.
  Senator Kerry has repeatedly stated that he intends to lift the Bush 
ban on stem cell research. What he does not tell us is that there is no 
Bush ban on stem cell research. Indeed, just this past year, under the 
Bush administration, some $300 million has been spent on adult stem 
cell research, and on embryonic stem cell research, there has been 
about $35 million spent. The facts are simple, and they are basically 
this: This body, the Congress of the United States, passed a ban on 
Federal dollars being used for research that involves the destruction 
of a human embryo.

                              {time}  2045

  Interestingly, Senator Kerry has voted for that, it is in the Labor,

[[Page 20621]]

Health and Human Services bill, and he has voted for it I understand 
repeatedly; and that is where the ban is. It is actually in a bill this 
body passed and that Presidential candidate John Kerry actually voted 
for. He is now criticizing President Bush for something that he 
actually voted for.
  So what is the truth? What is really going on? Well, this body voted 
for no funding on any research that involves the destruction of a human 
embryo. When you do embryonic stem cell research in humans, you have to 
destroy a human embryo in order to do that research. You have to take 
stem cells out of that embryo and, in the process of doing that, you 
destroy it. This is not illegal in the United States. It is perfectly 
legal to do it. The debate is exclusively over Federal funding of it.
  Now, what President Clinton did is he played a very clever game 
around the intent of the law. He allowed these embryos to be destroyed 
in outside labs, and then the embryonic stem cells were shipped over to 
the NIH and he allowed Federal funding to be used for that.
  I, along with others, felt that President Clinton was violating the 
law when he was doing that. And we asked him to stop, and he did not. 
Ultimately, George Bush came into office, and this was one of the first 
significant biomedical issues that the Bush administration had to 
wrestle with, and the decision was made that they would stop doing 
that. They would essentially stop being complicit in violation of the 
law and they would comply with the law.
  So what is exactly the controversy here, you might say? Stem cell 
research, embryo stem cell research, what exactly is going on is very, 
very simple. We have been using adult stem cells, and adult stem cells 
are stem cells from our own bodies, in treating people with diseases 
for years and years and years and years.
  I have in this chart next to me on my left an example of a person who 
had bad rheumatoid arthritis, and this is something we call a 
rheumatoid nodule. They were treated with adult stem cells, and you can 
see in this photo that nodule clears up, the rheumatoid arthritis goes 
away.
  This is another chart of the same person. It may be a little bit hard 
to see, but this is before the treatment, the joints were very inflamed 
and red. You can see a nodule here on the thumb. Then after an adult 
stem cell treatment, it all clears up.
  There are some people who feel that these embryonic stem cells will 
be better at this kind of treatment, but it has never been done. Nobody 
has ever taken an embryonic stem cell and treated a human being for 
anything.
  What I believe Senator Kerry wants is he wants Federal dollars to be 
used for embryonic stem cell research in humans, even though it has 
never even been successfully done in animals. I think this is the wrong 
thing to do, and I think Mr. Kerry needs to retract some of these 
misstatements that he has been making.

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