[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 14313-14317]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           STEM CELL RESEARCH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Weldon) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise on the floor to address an 
issue that will be in the news a great deal next week. The Congress of 
the United States has debated on and off for quite a few years the 
issues surrounding new breakthroughs in cellular treatments for a 
variety of clinical diseases, and specifically what I am talking about 
here are stem cell therapies.
  The debate that the Congress has been engaged in for some time now is 
the issue of whether adult stem cells, stem cells taken from my body, 
or any adult's body, or even a child's body, because they are 
considered adult stem cells, can more successfully be used to treat a 
variety of different clinical conditions; or whether cord blood, which 
is blood from the umbilical cord, or actually you can get stem cells 
from the placenta, from the cord itself; or whether this notion that 
has been put forward for quite some time now, that the stem cells taken 
from an embryo is actually the best hope for the future for treating a 
whole variety of different diseases, diseases that we today have no 
treatments for.
  I have taken a keen interest in this issue for some time now for a 
variety of reasons, the first of which being I am a physician. I still 
see patients about once a month in the veterans clinic in my 
congressional district. I practiced medicine for 15 years, internal 
medicine, prior to my election in 1994. I spent many years treating 
diseases like Parkinson's disease and arthritis and Alzheimer's 
disease, diseases that we don't have cures for that people often cite 
as being potentially more successfully treated with embryonic stem 
cells.
  Additionally, I have to say some of these diseases have affected my 
family. My own father died of complications of diabetes, and an uncle 
that I was very close to as a small child died of complications of 
Parkinson's disease. So I consider these arguments very, very 
personally, I consider them professionally, and I look at the science. 
I look very, very closely at the science.
  Indeed, I think the science overwhelmingly, if you just pause for a 
minute and look at the data, clearly, clearly shows that adult stem 
cells have great promise. Cord blood stem cells have not only great 
promise, but they are actually being used today. We have cured people 
with sickle cell anemia, something I would have never thought in my 
lifetime I would be able to stand up and say that we are curing sickle 
cell anemia. Cord blood.
  Embryonic stem cells, on the other hand, not only have never been 
successfully used to treat any human condition whatsoever, they have 
not really been shown to be safe and effective, even in an animal 
model. Therefore, I find it bizarre and unusual that Members of the 
Congress would say straight-faced, incredibly, that the embryonic stem 
cells have more promise and the adult stem cells don't. The data 
actually suggests the absolute opposite.
  And, as I said, the embryonic stem cells actually are very 
problematic and they have never been proven to be safe. They tend to 
form tumors, and we don't even have an animal model yet.

                              {time}  1900

  Indeed, this issue has become so bizarre it has actually become a 
campaign issue. I thought it would be good to have a debate and not 
just have me get up and do a monologue and show slides, but to have 
some of the Democrat proponents of embryonic stem cell research come to 
the floor and discuss this issue with me.
  One of the big advocates for it is the gentlewoman from Colorado. I 
asked her to debate me, and she declined. I asked the chairman of the 
DCCC, Mr. Emanuel, if he would be willing to come and debate me. He 
told me he was too busy. I can understand why these people don't want 
to debate. If you actually look at the science, look at the data, their 
arguments just don't hold up. There is no ``there'' there.
  I would like to just cover perhaps some of the arguments that we 
would be getting into if they were here. One of them obviously, and I 
want to do some separating myths from facts, and one of them which we 
saw a lot of in the past, and you don't see this argument as much but 
it is still out there, that is the argument that embryonic stem cell 
research is not allowed or that it is illegal.
  In point of fact, it is allowed in the United States. It is not 
illegal. The argument is should it be funded by the Federal Government.
  About a year ago, we took up H.R. 810, a bill that allows U.S. 
taxpayer dollars to be used for the destruction of human embryos in 
pursuing embryonic stem cell therapy. I must digress to explain how we 
got to where we are today. This began back I think it was 1996 when we 
passed an amendment in the Labor Health and Human Services 
Appropriations bill, and this was signed by President Clinton, stating 
that no U.S. taxpayer dollars would be used for any research involving 
the destruction of a human embryo. We never made it illegal.
  The advocates for H.R. 810 in their bill basically say we will now 
use taxpayer dollars for research that does involve the destruction of 
a human embryo, essentially overriding the provision that has been in 
law for some 10 years. And they contend that we need to do this because 
of the great promise.
  I just want to point out that we are already funding embryonic stem 
cell research, because what happened in the 1990s after President 
Clinton signed the bill that had the prohibition in it against 
destructive embryonic research, researchers began to destroy the 
embryos in outside labs and then send the embryonic stem cells to the 
NIH, and it was a violation of the spirit of the law if not the legal 
letter of the law.
  One of the things that President Bush did immediately upon coming to 
office is he reviewed this policy, and he said we are not going to do 
this any more because clearly in the statute we are not supposed to be 
funding research that involves the destruction of human embryos. But 
they had already destroyed some 72 human embryos, and they had 72 cell 
lines. President Bush said we will allow funding for this research 
using these existing cell lines because the embryos are already 
destroyed, but we will not permit the destruction of any more embryos.
  Well, H.R. 810, which passed the House of Representatives a year or 9 
months ago, would allow Federal funds to be used for the destruction of 
more embryos to get more of these embryonic stem cell lines. I worked 
against that bill. I thought that was the wrong thing for us to do 
based on the simple fact that embryonic stem cells is a bad investment 
for the taxpayer, and I think it is morally and ethically wrong. But 
nonetheless on that vote in this body the ``noes'' did not prevail;

[[Page 14314]]

the ``ayes'' prevailed and we passed it out of the House, and it has 
been waiting in the Senate.
  One of the big reasons I am here tonight is the Senate has finally 
agreed to take that piece of legislation up. But many of the Members of 
the Senate who feel the way that I do, that the destruction of human 
embryos is not something that we should be funding with taxpayer 
dollars, have proposed a plan to move three bills.
  One of the bills is H.R. 810, the Castle-DeGette bill that allows 
funding for creation of more cell lines using embryonic stem cells. And 
then there is a second bill which is very exciting that calls for more 
funding for more research for methods of getting embryonic stem cells 
without destroying an embryo. Science is moving along so rapidly there 
is a way to do that.
  And a third piece of legislation which is a piece of legislation 
barring a practice called fetal farming. I have been saying on the 
floor of this Chamber for years that embryonic stem cell research will 
not be where they will want to end. These researchers will then want to 
do something called fetal farming where they start doing research using 
human fetuses. That is the direction they will go in. They will make 
the same kinds of arguments that they have made with embryonic stem 
cell research that they are going to cure this and they are going to 
cure that, and that is the direction that they are going to go in.
  The Senate is going to take up a bill, and I have introduced a bill 
in the House. They may pass all three of these bills, and we may then 
take up the ban on fetal farming legislation, my piece of legislation, 
and a piece of legislation introduced by Roscoe Bartlett in the House, 
the so-called alternatives bill, ways to get embryonic stem cells 
without destroying human embryos.
  I want to say a little bit more about the Bush policy. There were 78 
cell lines over at NIH when President Bush came into office. The 
advocates for H.R. 810 are saying that we need more cell lines; but 
point of fact, they have only had to use 22 of those.
  I also want to point out that there is no bar on private funding for 
this embryonic stem cell research. Indeed, there are private dollars 
being used. But what is interesting, the State of California recently 
had a ballot referendum approving $3 billion worth of research over 10 
years on stem cells. So their entire State annual budget will probably 
exceed what the NIH spends on adult stem cells and embryonic stem cells 
combined.
  And there is research going on in New Jersey and at Harvard, so 
claims that this Federal ban, so-called Federal ban, and there isn't a 
ban, we are actually funding it using the cell lines that existed, it 
is just not true. There is lots of research going on. There is research 
in California, research in other States, research at private 
institutions, and there is embryonic stem cell research being funded by 
the NIH.
  What is not being allowed is we are not continuing to use taxpayer 
dollars for this research because there is an ethical and moral dilemma 
here. You are destroying a human embryo. Indeed, the NIH last year 
spent an estimated $40 million on embryonic stem cell research.
  Now I want to get a little more into some of the myths and the bogus 
statements.
  One myth is that it is estimated that there are currently about 
400,000 frozen IVF embryos which could be used in embryonic stem cell 
research. Well, it turns out that is not true. And this issue has 
actually been looked into. The RAND Corporation looked into it.
  It turns out that of the 400,000 embryos stored in IVF clinics, and 
that's the source here, the Castle-DeGette bill, H.R. 810, calls for 
using the so-called excess embryos at the fertility clinics. When a 
couple goes in and they want to have a baby and they go to one of these 
fertility clinics to use in vitro fertilization, there are often 
embryos left over. But it turns out that 88.2 percent of the embryos in 
those clinics are actually wanted by the couples to do future 
pregnancies. So you don't have 400,000 embryos available.
  It also turns out that when you thaw out the embryos, there is a 
certain mortality. They don't all survive thawing. And at best, it is 
estimated that 2.8 percent of these, and all of this has been published 
and I have the publication with me right here, this was published in 
the Journal of Fertility and Sterility and I can make it available to 
any Member of the House or Senate who believes there are 400,000 
embryos available for research. It is just not true. It turns out there 
is only a fraction of that number, and at most you would be able to get 
about 280 more cell lines from using the so-called leftover embryos 
from the fertility clinics.
  Like I said, there are still plenty more cell lines at NIH. This is 
an unnecessary piece of legislation, and I believe it is unethical.
  Another point I want to address is that it has been claimed that the 
cell lines at the NIH are contaminated by mouse feeder cells. You 
cannot grow these embryonic stem cells on their own. You have to have a 
layer of mouse cells growing on a plate, and then you put the embryonic 
cells in there, and that there is genetic contamination.
  And I have the papers with me here. It turns out you can remove all 
of that so-called contamination and it is really not a problem.
  Another point I want to get into is a point which has been made, and 
maybe I can get some assistance on the next poster here. Thank you.
  I have already covered this. This was mentioned by a Member of the 
other body, that all of these approved lines are now contaminated with 
mouse feeder cells. I have the publication here. It was published in 
Nature and Biotechnology. Most embryonic stem cell researchers around 
the world are using NIH-approved stem cell lines, and they are able to 
get the mouse feeder cells out of it.
  May I have the next poster, please.
  This is an important point. It is another point which has been 
claimed, and that is supposedly because of the so-called Bush ban, and 
that is the term you often hear them use, the Bush ban, and again there 
is no Bush ban. Under the Bush policy, there is a ban on killing more 
embryos, but there is not a ban on embryonic stem cell research, and 
that we are supposedly falling behind, the United States is no longer 
the world leader in embryonic stem cell research.
  Here again I think the best thing to do is to look at science 
publications. I have done that. This is a fascinating piece of 
information. Actually, it really amazed me.
  Mr. Speaker, 85 percent of the embryonic stem cell research being 
done in the world today is using the cells at the NIH, the Bush-
approved cell lines, that were derived from embryos that were killed 
under the Clinton administration. So this claim that, oh, we must have 
more embryos, we must get these embryos from the fertility clinics, we 
must extract embryos stem cells from them because the cures are around 
the corner and we are falling behind, we see that claim, evidence that 
the United States is no longer the world leader in embryonic stem cell 
research is mounting. It is just not true.
  According to Nature and Biotechnology, in 2006 the U.S. is the 
world's leader in the number of published stem cell articles generally, 
and human embryonic stem cell articles specifically. The United States 
is the world leader.
  From 1998 to 2004, the U.S. alone published 46 percent of all papers 
worldwide on human embryonic stem cells.

                              {time}  1915

  In the period from 2002 to 2004, the U.S. increased the number of 
human embryonic stem cell publications by 700 percent, using the 
embryonic stem cell lines approved by the Bush policy. So, clearly, 
that statement that the U.S. is falling behind because of the Bush 
policy, there is no basis in science, there is no basis in fact to 
substantiate that.
  Now, let me go to the next slide. And this is a very, very 
interesting point that you often hear made, that adult stem cells have 
been around for years, and they have an advantage in that the research 
has been going on for some time. And it is true that adult stem

[[Page 14315]]

cell transplants have been done for over 20 years, I think over 25 
years in humans, and the claim is made that the embryonic stem cells 
were just discovered in 1998 at the University of Wisconsin. Jamie 
Thompson discovered them, a researcher, and he didn't really discover 
them. Everybody knew they were there. What he was able to do was 
successfully extract them and grow them in a dish.
  But it turns out, and here again, this was published in a scientific 
journal, embryonic stem cells, animal embryonic stem cells have been 
used for 25 years, 25 years, embryonic stem cells research in animals. 
And the most interesting thing about this is that they have never been 
shown in that 25-year period to be safe and effective in the treatment 
in animals. What is lacking in this whole debate is an animal model. 
You cannot take a diabetic rat or a diabetic mouse and do an embryonic 
stem cell transplant and cure that animal of its diabetes. Twenty-five 
years.
  And the other critical thing is, embryonic stem cells form tumors. 
And actually it is interesting to note, that is one of the ways 
scientists demonstrate or validate that they actually have embryonic 
stem cells. They will take the embryonic stem cells, or what they think 
is an embryonic stem cell line that they have extracted from an embryo, 
an animal embryo, and they will inject it into the animal. They will 
inject it in the mouse, and if it forms a tumor, it is a certain kind 
of tumor called a teratoma, then they know it is an embryonic stem 
cell. And before you can ever use something like that in a human you 
have to turn off that ability to form a tumor to show that it is safe, 
and it has never been done. They have never demonstrated, in 25 years, 
that they can cure an animal of a disease and show that it can be done 
safely.
  Now, might I digress for a minute, just to say that adult stem cells 
have been shown to be safe? Adult stem cells have been shown to treat a 
whole host of conditions. Indeed, I have had people come to my office 
who have gotten cord blood transplants, who have gotten adult stem cell 
transplants and have been cured of diseases. I mentioned sickle cell 
anemia earlier. I had a young lady who had paralysis, and with adult 
stem cell therapy, she can't walk, but she is able to stand up. She 
came in my office. I have a picture of her doing that. That kind of 
research has been published. And so it is just fascinating when you 
actually start looking at the science here.
  And now, I want to get into the issue of where is the American public 
on this issue, and maybe we can get the next one up there. One of the 
things that is often claimed by the advocates for H.R. 810, the Castle-
DeGette language, is the American people really want this.
  Now, one of the advocates on the Republican side of the aisle that 
has been advocating for an overturning of the Bush policy and more 
funding, that involves destroying human embryos, because they know that 
we are already funding embryonic stem cell research.
  The Winston Group did a poll, and it showed, supposedly, and this is 
the myth, that Republican voters support expanding embryonic stem cell 
research by a margin of 55-38. And that was published by the Main 
Street Partnership, which is a Republican group that has been 
advocating, they have been involved in the efforts to pass the Castle-
DeGette legislation.
  It turned out that in that same poll, they then asked those 
Republican voters, if they knew that it involved the destruction of an 
embryo, what would happen? And 64 percent said they were less 
favorable. In other words, you went from a 55-38 in favor of it, and 
when you revealed to them that this research involves, essentially, the 
killing of a human embryo, 64 percent changed their mind. They changed 
their position.
  Another myth. Every poll shows the dominant majority of Americans 
support embryonic stem cell research. Facts are stubborn things. 
Congress is considering the question of Federal funding of experiments 
using stem cells from human embryos. The live embryo would be destroyed 
in the first week of development to obtain these cells.
  Do you support or oppose using your Federal tax dollars for such 
experiments? That is the right question you have got to ask the 
American people. Well, here are the numbers. When you ask them the 
right question, 38.6 percent say they support that; 47.8 percent say 
they oppose it.
  Now, granted this is not a majority. But this is certainly not a 
majority. It is a fallacy to say that a majority of Americans support 
funding research involving the destruction of human embryos. It is just 
not true.
  One of the other myths that you often hear is that therapies are 
around the corner. I alluded to this earlier. Before you can say human 
embryonic stem cell therapy is around the corner, somebody has to 
develop an animal model that shows that it works and it is safe before 
you could try it in a human, and they have yet to do that. They have 
just been unable to do that.
  The other thing I want to get at is another myth, stem cell research, 
whether it is done with embryonic stem cells or adult stem cells, needs 
cloning research to make it work. And that was said in a debate in 
previous years by a former Member of the Congress who now heads the 
Biotechnology Industry Organization, or BIO, as they call it.
  I think Congressman Greenwood, at the time, was partially right. 
Embryonic stem cell proponents will need to clone, if they ever have a 
hope of using embryonic stem cells for human therapies. And the reason 
for that is to get over the issue of tissue rejection. You can't take 
an embryo from a fertility clinic and extract stem cells from it and 
give it to somebody else who is sick. They will reject the tissue, 
whereas with adult stem cells where you take it from the patient, you 
take nasal cells or you take bone marrow cells, you convert those in 
the tissue that you need and you put them back in the patient, there is 
no issue of tissue rejection.
  And so the only way that embryonic stem cell research would ever 
work, and so he was partially correct in what he said, is that you 
would have to do cloning. And that is where these two issues come 
together.
  A lot of people will ask me the question, what is the relationship 
between cloning and embryonic stem cell research? It is a very simple 
one. Adult stem cells work because there are no, well, they work, first 
of all. Embryonic stem cells have never been shown to work. But adult 
stem cells can work because there are no issues of tissue rejection.
  But when you talk about using embryonic stem cells from a fertility 
clinic, it is somebody else's cells. You are going to reject those 
tissues. You are going to have to take immunosuppressive drugs your 
entire lifetim unless, of course, you made a clone of that person, and 
then the belief is that you would not get tissue rejection. Actually, 
scientific research suggests that you would still, nonetheless, get 
tissue rejection.
  Well, here, I think, is a poster that basically says it all. Adult 
stem cell research, well, this is from a year ago actually on the top 
here. They had 58 different diseases, human diseases. These are sick 
people. I am not talking about treating rats or mice, monkeys. I am 
talking about human beings. A year ago we had 58 published in the 
scientific literature, different clinical conditions treated 
successfully.
  Now, they are not all cures. There is a guy who was treated with an 
adult stem cell transplant for Parkinson's disease. He still has a 
little bit of Parkinson's disease. But he is off of most of his 
medicines, he is able to walk, talk, feed himself much better. He is 80 
percent better.
  And so I want to be honest. They are not all 100 percent cures, but 
58, successful therapies; zero with embryonic stem cells. That was May 
of 2005. May of 2006, 72, so in 1 year's time, it is almost one, a 
little more than one a month I see, I look at these studies, I comb the 
research literature. It is a little more than one a month new clinical 
diseases successfully treated with adult stem cells and cord blood stem 
cells. And, of course, embryonic stem cells, still no therapies. 
Amazing.

[[Page 14316]]

  And what is really interesting behind this figure, it is not 72 
people. It is thousands of people that have been treated. There are 
some of these treatments that are being used constantly, and yet we 
don't have a single one using embryonic stem cells.
  And this is the part that I don't understand about the debates here 
in this Congress. As I said, I am a doctor, and when I see these kinds 
of, you know, a lot of times we debate reality here. We debated a few 
weeks ago whether we should pull out of Iraq. I mean, that is a real 
honest debate. The soldiers are there. The war is going on. Are we 
going to pull out or whether we are going to stay.
  But to debate that we need to fund more of this research claiming 
that we don't fund it, when, in reality we fund it, and to claim that 
it is more promising when there is absolutely no evidence of that, the 
opposite is the case. The adult stem cells, the cord blood stem cells; 
and those don't involve destroying human embryos, and Americans are 
just not comfortable with that.
  Now, I said earlier in my introduction that there will be three bills 
taken up over in the Senate. One of them is this Castle-DeGette bill, 
which will allow the creation of more cell lines, destroying more human 
embryos, even though we don't need more cell lines, even though we are 
leading the world in research. Even though the embryonic stem cell 
research appears to be going nowhere, the adult and cord blood stem 
cell research is showing more promise, they want to kill more embryos. 
And that is how H.R. 810 passed this body.
  It is probably going to pass the Senate. Most of the Senators, I 
assume, do not read the medical literature. They just accept these 
arguments at face value, that embryonic stem cells are more promising. 
So they will, the discussion is that they will approve that bill.
  But they are going to take up, and I am glad the Senate is going to 
be doing this, two other bills. One of them is a bill, a piece of 
legislation involving more research on alternatives to developing 
embryonic stem cells. And I think this is very exciting. See, most of 
the people who want to do embryonic stem cell research are not 
clinicians like me. Not doctors. They are Ph.D researchers, bench 
researchers, and they want to study the science of this. They want to 
publish papers, that science can ultimately be used, maybe to better 
understand diseases.

                              {time}  1930

  I do not take that away. I think there is some validity to that 
argument. The reason I do not support H.R. 810, though, is because we 
have embryonic stem cells available through the NIH where they can fund 
the research. We have private entities willing to fund dollars to be 
used to kill, destroy more embryos so that you can get more embryonic 
stem cells. We just don't need to be using Federal tax dollars for 
this.
  But what is really exciting is there is a multitude of evidence 
emerging that you can take adult stem cells and treat them and get them 
to behave like embryonic stem cells. One of the most exciting groups 
that has approached me about this issue is a group in California that 
is using testicular cells, and they appear to be able to get them to do 
all the things that embryonic stem cells can do. And some of this is 
making it to the literature, Nature Magazine, which is a scientific 
publication, just published last week, and the title was ``A Simple 
Recipe Gives Adult Stem Cells Embryonic Powers. Reprogramming adult 
stem cells to repair damaged tissues may not be quite as tough as 
thought. Researchers have devised a chemical cocktail that makes adult 
mass cells behave like embryonic stem cells, and the recipe is 
surprisingly simple.''
  So the science is moving us in a direction where we do not need, 
basically, to kill human embryos to do this kind of research. We can 
create embryonic stem cells from testicular cells. We can create 
embryonic stem cells. Really using this evidence from this report in 
Nature, you can use adult stem cells. So very, very exciting things 
going on.
  And I just want to point out that I am not the only person talking 
about this. If I can get the next slide here, this was at a hearing 
about 2 or 3 weeks ago in the other body. The committee chairman asked, 
Would you say, then, that embryonic stem cells are the best available, 
although all others ought to be pursued? So he was basically asking the 
question, we should do adult stem cell research, cord blood stem cell 
research, but wouldn't you say that the embryonic stem cells are the 
best available?
  And this was a question to Dr. James Battey. He is the director of 
the NIH Stem Cell Task Force. So this is the man who oversees the peer 
review panels that look at all the applications for stem cell research, 
and these are the folks that approve funding, and they fund cord blood 
stem cell research. They fund adult stem cell research, and they are 
funding embryonic stem cell research and providing the cell lines, the 
NIH-approved cell lines, to the researchers.
  And this is what he said. It is an amazing quote: ``To me the very 
most interesting thing is this frontier area of nuclear reprogramming 
where you take a mature adult cell type and you effectively 
dedifferentiate it back to a pluripotent state.''
  He is saying, and this is, I think, the man who should be the most 
knowledgeable on this level of research throughout the world, is that 
you do not need embryos. You do not need to destroy embryos. You don't 
have to use taxpayer dollars for the destruction of human life. This is 
the exciting area, nuclear reprogramming, where you can take an adult 
stem cell and basically get it to behave like an embryonic stem cell.
  Might I just say as an aside, while Dr. Battey is very excited about 
this and I think it is going to bear fruit and there are going to be a 
lot of Ph.D. theses written using these kinds of cells, I do not think 
they will ever be useful in any medical treatments. I may be wrong. 
They may prove to be very useful. And that is because the adult stem 
cells are proven to be very, very useful now. I mean, there are some 
four, five, six different clinical trials under way now, as we speak, 
using adult stem cells used to treat congestive heart failure, one of 
the most common heart conditions that we see in the United States. 
Thousands of people in the United States die every year from it. And I 
seriously question if the embryonic stem cells would ever prove to be 
any better than the adult stem cell therapies that are currently under 
way and are being used in research.
  I want to talk just a little bit more before I close about this issue 
of fetal farming, and why did I introduce a bill to ban fetal farming; 
why is that going to be introduced in the Senate. And we may not 
actually take up my bill, though it is identical to the Senate bill. 
The Senate may approve the ban on fetal farming that, I think, Senator 
Santorum has introduced, the same bill.
  Why do I want to go in this direction? Well, if you look at the 
scientific literature, it appears as though that is the direction some 
researchers want to go, and that is where they are not doing research 
involving human embryonic stem cells. They are now implanting human 
embryos either in an animal or in a human being and then extracting 
stem cells or tissue from the fetus.
  And why am I concerned about this? Well, here is a study. I think 
this one involved cows. It was published back in 2002. They took a cow 
embryo. Actually, they took a cow egg and they did cloning. They 
created a cloned cow. They put that cow cloned into another cow, and 
then they extracted the cloned cow fetus from the mother cow and they 
got tissue out of it, and they used the tissue to do a tissue 
transplant.
  Then there was another study, and I think this will be the last 
poster that I will put up, and this is another cow study where they did 
the same thing. They were looking to get fetal liver, and they were 
successful in doing that; and it was published in July of last year, 
where they are taking either

[[Page 14317]]

clones or embryos that are created through sexual fertilization, and 
they are putting it in a cow. They are letting it develop for 6 months, 
and then they are taking tissue out to get stem cells.
  That is the direction I feel that some researchers will want to go 
in, and I think that should not be allowed in humans. I think it is 
repugnant. It is revolting. So I have introduced legislation to ban 
doing that in humans. And the legislation, which is the Fetal Farming 
Prohibition Act of 2006, I believe, will pass the Senate. I believe it 
will pass the House. And, hopefully, the President will be signing it.
  Hopefully, he will be signing the alternatives research bill. I think 
we should be putting more money into ways to develop embryonic stem 
cells without having to kill an embryo, and certainly that would 
satisfy all of these researchers who want to do this research.
  The President has indicated that if the Senate passes the Castle-
DeGette bill, H.R. 810, that his intention is to veto it, and I 
certainly support him in that. I hope he does do that because it is the 
wrong thing to do morally and ethically. There are millions of American 
taxpayers who will be seeing their tax dollars used to destroy a human 
embryo. I am against that. They are against that. We should let the 
private sector fund that. The private sector will not fund it because 
it is probably research that is not going to go anywhere. The President 
should veto it. I believe we can sustain the veto. This is the right 
thing to do morally. This is the right thing to do ethically. It is 
also the right thing to do with the taxpayer dollars.
  I put the poster up earlier showing all the treatments with adult 
stem cells and how embryonic stem cells have never been shown to be 
safe and effective even in an animal model, and why should we be using 
taxpayer dollars to fund this research when so many people find it 
repugnant and, as well, it has never been demonstrated to be effective.
  So this will be an issue. It will be in the news next week. The 
Senate will take it up first, then the House. We have already passed 
H.R. 810. We will pass, hopefully, the ban on fetal farming and the 
alternative bill, and then all three bills will go to the President. 
Hopefully, he will sign the alternatives research bill and the ban on 
fetal farming; and, hopefully, he will veto the Castle-DeGette bill. Of 
course, if he does that, the Senate may override his veto. I certainly 
hope the House sustains his veto. It is the smart thing to do and it is 
the right thing to do.
  So with that I end my discussion on this issue, and I am looking 
forward to the debate next week and participating in it.

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