[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16570-16571]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           STEM CELL RESEARCH

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, yesterday, a few feet out of this Chamber, I 
had the opportunity to meet with three young ladies from Nevada. Megan 
Christensen is 14 years old; Anna Ressel, from Sparks, 13 years old; 
and Jordan Exber, a 14-year-old from Las Vegas.
  These girls were here to present me with a little award as a result 
of work I have done on juvenile diabetes. I was representative of many 
people who have worked on the issue. But the reason I mention this is 
not any award that was given to me or any of the other Senators but the 
plight of these young ladies.
  One of the girls was determined to have diabetes 3 months ago--a 
beautiful child, Jordan, from Las Vegas. They prepared a book for me: 
``2007, Children's Congress.''
  Among other things, one of the pictures in this is a bunch of 
syringes. Look at this. I can't count them. This is 1 week's picking 
and poking at this young lady's body that she has to go through because 
of diabetes.
  Type 1 juvenile diabetes is a chronic disease and for the child with 
type 1 diabetes, the pancreas does not produce insulin, a hormone 
necessary to sustain life. Without insulin the sugar in the blood can't 
be used. It builds up in the bloodstream, even though the body is 
starved for energy. A person with type 1 diabetes must take one or more 
injections of insulin daily to stay alive.
  She has written here: ``I take 42 shots, at least, every week. This 
does not count the testing,'' to find out what her blood sugar levels 
are; 42 a week.
  The reason I mention this is these young and beautiful children were 
here to talk about something the President is going to do today--veto 
stem cell research legislation. What a shame. Last year, the 
Republican-controlled House and Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill to 
open up hope for these young ladies.
  To indicate this is not just something that is important for Nevada, 
they had there a girl from Australia. A teenager from Australia was 
here to indicate this is an international problem. We in America, with 
the genius we have here--out of the top 142 universities in the world, 
we have 129 of them in America. One of the best, of course, is in the 
State of the Presiding Officer--Johns Hopkins. Research is going on 
there. Stem cell research should be going on there, and it is not.
  It was a happy day for all of us when the bill passed the House and 
the Senate. It was a day Democrats and Republicans put politics and 
partisanship aside to do the right thing for the American people. Yet 
when we sent this historic bill to the President's desk, he vetoed it. 
It was his first veto of his Presidency.
  With the health and hope of literally millions of Americans hanging 
in the balance, he vetoed the bill. It was the first veto, I repeat, of 
his administration.
  A year passed. The best scientists continued to work with one hand 
tied behind their backs. I indicated 129 great universities in America, 
the best universities in the world, are not allowed to do this. 
Countless millions of Americans have been diagnosed with

[[Page 16571]]

dread diseases, thousands and thousands, with Parkinson's, spinal cord 
injuries, heart disease. A year has passed, but today we are told the 
President plans to veto the stem cell bill again.
  These children suffer from diabetes. They were here to help get this 
bill passed.
  When we sent the bill to the President 2 weeks ago, Speaker Pelosi 
and I were joined by 10-year-old Toni Bethea, who lives in the District 
of Columbia and suffers from diabetes, and Allison Howard, who suffers 
from Rett Syndrome--beautiful children, one of them extremely ill. They 
deserve hope, just like these girls from Las Vegas, Sparks, Reno, from 
Australia.
  President Bush has indicated that he would not give them any hope. He 
is going to veto the bill, we are told. He would not listen to the more 
than 500 leading organizations who support this bill, the American 
Association of Retired Persons, AARP, the American Medical Association, 
the American Diabetes Association, more than 500 organizations. He 
would not listen to 80 Nobel laureates who have said this is essential. 
He would not listen to his own Director--I am talking about President 
Bush--his own Director of the National Institutes of Health, who 
supports embryonic stem cell research. He is not listening to the 
majority of the American people. This proposal is supported by more 
than 80 percent of the American public. They call for stem cell 
research.
  This narrow ideology that has guided this administration, that has us 
in this intractable war in Iraq, that has us losing standing in the 
world community, having 47 million Americans with no health care and no 
plan coming from the White House to improve that--a program that is 
lacking in keeping our children in school. On the environment, global 
warming is taking place. It is being ignored by this White House. This, 
a hope for millions--stem cell research--indicates this narrow ideology 
is wrong, and it is preventing the curing of diseases, the prevention 
of diseases. We deserve better. We are a nation of endless compassion 
and unlimited ingenuity. Megan, Anna, Jordan, Toni, and Allison deserve 
to know we are a better country than this narrow ideology.
  President Bush's veto is a setback, but we are going to continue to 
give hope to these children and the American people.

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