[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9145-9146]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     THEY WILL NOT JUST DIE ANYWAY

  (Mr. PITTS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, some time this summer, the House will vote on 
a bill to allow Federal funds to be used to destroy embryos stored at 
IVF clinics in order to harvest their stem cells. Those voting for this 
legislation will say that these are leftover embryos. They will say 
they are going to be killed anyway.
  Well, they are wrong. Only 2.8 percent of embryos in IVF clinics have 
been set aside for research; the rest are destined for implantation or 
adoption.
  But, we do not need to kill these embryos to do stem cell research. 
Stem cells can be taken from many adult sources: fatty tissue, spleen, 
liver, sinus, bone marrow, just to name a few. These are called adult 
stem cells.
  Adult stem cell research is currently treating 58 diseases 
successfully. Embryonic stem cell research is treating none: 58, adult 
stem cell; zero, embryonic stem cell. If there were no ethical 
alternative, which there is, if we applied ``they are going to die 
anyway''

[[Page 9146]]

rationale to other areas of research, it would justify such things as 
harvesting organs from death-row inmates and from terminally ill 
patients.
  We should support adult stem cell research, not embryonic.

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