[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 10964]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




     THE ISSUE OF FEDERAL FUNDING FOR EMBRYONIC STEM CELL RESEARCH

  (Mr. BURGESS asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, we are going to take up a bill this morning 
that would greatly expand Federal funding for embryonic stem cell 
research, and that is the issue this morning, the issue of Federal 
funding for this process. The question is, are we going to use taxpayer 
dollars for destruction of human embryos in order to further a certain 
line of research?
  President Bush in 2001 outlined his policy. There are 78 stem cell 
lines available at the National Institutes of Health available for 
study. Today's bill would in fairness expand those lines but would do 
so at the expense of human embryos that would be human embryos 
destroyed with taxpayer dollars.
  Mr. Speaker, there is no prohibition on any couple who has an 
embryonic at an IVF clinic, at a reproductive endocrinologist clinic, 
who wishes to donate that embryo to a private lab for development into 
a stem cell line. That can happen today. There is no such prohibition.
  But, Mr. Speaker, the issue today is whether or not we are going to 
use taxpayer dollars to fund that process. I believe the President had 
it right in 2001. It was correct to put parameters and boundaries 
around this research.

                          ____________________