HOPE Act

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I rise to start the discussion on this side regarding stem cells, regarding the major hope and promise of stem cells, stem cell research and adult stem cells, cord blood, amniotic fluid.

I wish to start off with a story of a patient, David Foege. I have a picture of him here. David Foege lives in Florida and has suffered from end-stage heart disease. He experienced shortness of breath, tiredness, and an inability to concentrate and function in a normal fashion. Over 2 years ago, his cardiologist indicated that he should go to hospice, saying he had no other options. ``I would be provided plenty of morphine to ease my way into a `transitional state,' '' was the statement of his treating physician. Hospice does provide great service, but David learned about adult stem cell treatments through a company called TheraVitae.

When I saw David last year, he had just returned from his first stem cell treatment. He has just returned from his second one a matter of weeks ago--just this week, as a matter of fact. We have a progress report from him about this amazing work which has taken place, this therapy which has occurred with adult stem cells. Listen to David's letter. It is really impressive and very interesting.

I am one of 7 people in the world who have experienced 2

stem cell therapies!

Susan and I have just returned from Bangkok, Thailand,

after 45 days of adult stem cell cardiac treatment and

rehabilitation. [One has to wonder why he is in Thailand for

that.] The absolute cutting edge of technology, the

utilization of my own stem cells reinjected into my heart,

allowed the reshaping and a re-functioning of my heart from a

life-threatening situation to a nearly normal heart function

today.

Following my stem cell [treatment] last year I went from a

life expectancy of one day to 90 days to at least one year.

The second stem cell treatment has jumpstarted me into the

range of normal function. I reasonably can expect a normal

life expectancy, which is approximately 10 to 15 more years.

I can't `` tell you how great it is to the back in the

greatest country in the world, the United States of America.

The weather is fabulous here in Florida, and it is wonderful

to sleep on my own soft bed.

I am in awe of the Creator, who amazingly engineered us to

have our own warranty in our body's toolbox with us at all

times . . . our own stem cells! It does not check our

politics, race, religion, or sex.

Some of the diseases in addition to heart diseases which

can be treated in 2008-2009 are the following [projected into

the future]:

Blindness macular degeneration, diabetes, stroke and

Parkinson's disease, paralysis of any part of the body

including back and/or legs, renal failure.

Being one of the world's longest living renal transplant

recipients of 23 years, I can't tell you how thrilled I am

for others that they may not have to endure the hellish

torture of a renal failure. This reasonable treatment is in

the immediate future.

It is an absolutely wonderful time to be alive. The only

letters, or designation, I would like to have behind my name

is David Foege, Alive!

TheraVitae has the technology to soup-up our cells and

differentiate them for maximum effectiveness. I would support

embryonic cells, but they have a 100% certain side effect of

growing cancer tumors. Our own adult stem cells do not.

Best wishes and great health be with you.

This opens a revolutionary door of opportunity to improve

the quality of life like it has for me and cut the spiraling

cost of health care in the USA.

On my way to Costco without cane or wheel chair for 30

minute shopping walk, I remain

Sincerely yours,

David Foege, Ph.D. And alive

That is a good way to start this discussion of these miraculous stem cells. They are beautiful, and they are working in at least 72 different human maladies. David Foege had treatments using two. The problem is, he has had to go to Bangkok, Thailand, for both of them instead of the United States.

Adult stem cell therapy has no ethical problems, no ethical questions. They are his own stem cells. Yet he has had to travel to Bangkok because we don't seem to have enough research funding to be able to support this sort of research into areas that are giving cures--treatments, I want to say, emphasize treatments, not cures--to people to give them an enthusiastic life, to give them a chance to live and to sign off ``David Foege, Ph.D., and alive.''

We have now found these amazing stem cells in many places, not only in cord blood. Thanks to my colleague from Iowa, who worked with me and many others, we established a cord blood bank, and we are now--I just checked these numbers before we came over here--at the end of 2006, there have been 10,000 cord blood transplants to unrelated donors. I got those from the New York Blood Center, which was responsible for 2,500 of these units. That is 10,000 people probably alive who wouldn't be--maybe some would, in other ways or shapes. But still it is taking place.

We now need to bank amniotic fluid. We just found in recent research--I want to show this chart as well. Some of my colleagues may have missed this. This came out in JAMA, February 28, 2007: ``Stem cells obtained from amniotic fluid.'' This is the fluid, of course, surrounding the child in the womb.

Amniotic fluid-derived stem cells--AFS cells--can be coaxed

to become muscle, bone, fat, blood, vessel, nerve and live

cells.

AFS, stem cells, might be capable of repairing damaged

tissues resulting from conditions such as spinal cord

injuries, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease and stroke.

I hope one of the efforts we can take on banking, that I could possibly do with my colleague from Iowa and many others, is banking amniotic fluid. This has been traditionally thrown away. It may hold the promise of incredible cures. It is a great source of stem cells. They are very malleable, the pluripotent stem cells that are taking place that are in this as well. That may be another one on which we can join together. There is much news to celebrate on the stem cell front, this being one.

In the placenta, I believe, they are finding a rich source of these pluripotent malleable stem cells as well--here another throwaway, if you will. That is an area we are going to be able to find and probably use more and more into the future for these very malleable, pluripotent stem cells from which we can create--not create but use for additional amazing cures.

I want to recognize the work of my colleagues who are on the other side of this debate, Senator Specter from Pennsylvania, Senator Harkin from Iowa--many others who have pushed for a long time in these areas, and much good has happened. In the cord blood banking, that has gone very well. In the adult stem cell research, that work has gone fabulously, as I just read in this opening story of a gentleman just back from Bangkok--although he wished his treatments were taking place in the United States rather than in Thailand. Much good has happened.

We have two major barriers. The first one I believe to be an insurmountable barrier, that first one being, What is the human embryo? If it is a person, as we have discussed many times, then it is entitled to human dignity and should be treated in a dignified fashion and not researched or taxpayer dollars used to research and destroy it. If it is property, it can be done with as its master chooses.

We have discussed and debated this many times. Obviously, here the effort would be to treat the youngest of human beings as property to be researched on, to be destroyed with the use of Federal taxpayer dollars. Yet, if you follow that debate on forward, at what point in time does a human embryo become a person? We know that if you allow it to grow, at some point in time, under everybody's definition, it becomes a person entitled to protection and human dignity. Yet we are saying here: No, at the earliest phases, we are going to treat it as property, and with Federal taxpayer dollars we are going to pay to destroy it and to research on it.

That is the obstacle which cannot be overcome because we believe in human dignity. We believe as a society in human dignity. So our debate, which we have had multiple sets of times, sets of different debates on this here, continues today.

The central question will be, Will we sanction the destruction of nascent human life with Federal taxpayer dollars? That is the central issue. Will we divert taxpayer dollars from adult stem cell research, which is working? See the case of Dr. David Foege--and send these dollars to fund speculative research that likely will never produce any patient treatments? That is the second question with it.

I mentioned the first to be an insurmountable one. I think the second is one of wisdom: Should we be funding something that is working or should we be speculating on something that is not and is producing, indeed, tumors? I will back that up with a number of research papers.

These are the two central questions. These are the two questions we will be debating throughout this period of time.

I doubt there is much surprise left on the vote, on how the votes will take place. It is an important debate. It does frame much of what we move forward with in this country and in places around the world. But these are the two central questions: Will we sanction the destruction of nascent human life with Federal taxpayer dollars? Will we divert taxpayer dollars from adult stem cell research which is working and send these dollars to fund speculative research that likely will never produce any patient treatments?

Central to this debate is the issue of how we treat our fellow man. We would all agree, I hope, that individuals should be treated with respect. We would agree that we should avoid prejudices. We would agree that each individual has an inalienable right to life--my colleagues, my colleague from Iowa, myself, the Presiding Officer, those around, those watching would all agree that we each have an inalienable right to life--to live. We would all hold this for the newborn through the eldest members of our society. But when does that life begin? The question that has vexed this body for some period of

time. Does it begin at birth? Does it begin before birth? When? Biology tells us that life begins much earlier than birth. Here I want to read from the ``Human Embryology'' textbook. It says this:

Although life is a continuous process, fertilization is a

critical landmark because under ordinary circumstances, a new

genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed.

Such definitions are helpful in clarifying that human life does begin at the embryonic phase. Indeed, myself, my colleague from Iowa, the Presiding Officer all began at that embryonic phase, whether the embryo comes the old-fashioned way, via IVF or a product of various scientific methods such as SCNT human cloning.

With the scientific fact in hand, we evaluate the facts in light of our ethical framework. For instance, we know that the human embryo is a human life. Then the question is, How should we treat it? Human life has immeasurable value, from the youngest to the oldest. Human beings are ends in themselves. It is wrong to use any human as a means to an end. Any time throughout human history when we have done otherwise we have regretted it.

Our value as people is intrinsic. I would say here, I am pro-life, whole life. I believe that all life is sacred, it is beautiful, it is unique, it is the child of a loving God, from beginning to end, it is true here, it is true in the womb, it is true of a child in Darfur, it is true of a lady in poverty, it simply is true.

Yes, we want to treat people and help people who have medical conditions. But we must not trample upon any human to achieve such an end. This is because human beings are distinct and unique amongst all creation. I would note that Ronald Reagan had, I thought, a very folksy way of defining whether this was human life and whether it should be protected. In his 1983 essay on ``Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation,'' he put this in a very commonsense way.

Anyone who doesn't feel sure whether we are talking about a

second human life, should clearly give life the benefit of

the doubt. If you don't know whether a body is alive or dead,

you would never bury it.

I think this consideration itself should be enough for all of us to insist on protecting the unborn. Very commonsense, folksy way, but he does hit the point. Will we do what is ethical with respect to our fellow man? This is one of the central questions of this debate.

Now during this debate some will argue that we should proceed with ethical embryonic stem cell research. Here I would distinguish between embryonic and some of the unquestionably ethical alternatives which we can talk about. With respect to embryonic stem cell research, though, as embodied in the guidelines of the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, S. 5, how is it possible to ethically do something that is completely unethical--destroy another human life, innocent human life-- for research purposes?

Arguments that the bill provides ethical guidelines, though well intended, I believed are misplaced. The ethics of S. 5 have nothing to do with protecting innocent life from destruction. They will fund, with taxpayer dollars, the destruction of innocent human life.

The ethics of S. 5 have to do with the process of how you donate young human embryos for destruction. Mr. President, we have had this debate before. We have had it on the floor on this issue, and we have had it before regarding other issues. We had it with the fetal tissue research from abortions.

I wish to take the body back to 1991, the Coalition for Research Freedom, in a letter signed by many prominent patient advocacy groups who are advocating embryonic stem cell research today, were advocating fetal tissue research in 1991. They wrote this: Fetal tissue transplantation research is widely recognized as one of the most promising research avenues for such disease and disabilities as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, diabetes, Huntington's, leukemia, epilepsy, spinal cord injuries, and many other chronic health conditions.

Doesn't that sound familiar, Congress responding to the emotional outcry with legislation to provide for funding for unethical research, research that can only take place with the trampling of the rights of a fellow human.

That was 1991. Those were the promises. That was the move forward by this body. That is what was pushed on forward. We know what happened. It was on the front page of the New York Times in 2001. The news story began like this:

A carefully controlled study that tried to treat

Parkinson's disease by implanting cells from aborted fetuses

into patient's brains not only failed to show an overall

benefit but also revealed a disastrous side effect,

scientists report.

In about 15 percent of patients, the cells apparently grew

too well, churning out so much of a chemical that controls

movement that the patients writhed and jerked uncontrollably.

The story continues:

``They chew constantly, their fingers go up and down, their

wrists flex and distend,'' Dr. Greene said. And the patients

writhe and twist, jerk their heads, fling their arms about.

``It was tragic, catastrophic,'' he said. ``It's a real

nightmare. And we cannot selectively turn it off.''

One man was so badly affected that--

We will see what happens. Hopefully, the sound will come back in a little while.

One man was so badly affected that he could no longer eat

and had to use a feeding tube, Dr. Greene said. In another,

the condition came and went unpredictably throughout the day,

and when it occurred, the man's speech was unintelligible.

For now, Dr. Greene said, his position is clear: ``No more

fetal transplants. We are absolutely and adamantly convinced

that this should be considered for research only.'' The

pattern repeats itself. It is a double tragedy. First, the

young human life is destroyed. Second, it is patients who

will likely be harmed. There are no embryonic human

treatments or applications, despite 25 years of embryonic

work in animal models and a decade of work with human

embryonic stem cells.

I repeat that. Twenty-five years of embryonic work in animal models, there are no human treatments, and a decade of work with human embryonic stem cells, no treatments.

But what we have learned about embryonic stem cells is that these cells are very good at forming tumors, in particular. The literature abounds with such stories. One example is in an area published last year in Stem Cells. You read the article and find: The expression of the insulin gene could be demonstrated only when the cell is differentiated in vivo into teratomas, those are tumors.

This is one example and there are many others. I wish to point this out because this was the same result we saw taking place with fetal tissue research, was that tumors were formed. That is what took place.

I wish to go to several of the articles now that are published articles on the formation of tumors by embryonic stem cells. Note this one on the insulin gene, this was in the publication Stem Cells, published August 2 of 2006--have another one published April 6, 2006.

They noted there as well the potential for teratoma development in embryonic stem cell lines, even after prolonged differentiation. I have a series of articles. Here is one in Neurochem, 2006, June. They were noting there frequent tumor-related deaths in transplanted animals taking place in that one.

Here is one in Stem Cells in June of 2006. There they note that rats grafted with human embryonic stem cells predifferentiated in vitro for 16 days developed severe teratomas--again, tumors.

The literature is full of that work. These are developing tumors. We note in Stem Cells publication, June of 2006, more than 70 percent of mice that received embryonic stem cells neural precursor cells developed teratomas, developed tumors.

I have a series of those publications, all noting the stem cell therapy in animals produced tumors. Strange. That is what we found took place in fetal tissue research when we were dealing with an older set of cells that had been developed, and now when we back it up to a younger set of stem cells or cells we are using, we are seeing this same feature, forming teratomas or tumors throughout each of the research animals and in some cases in almost every circumstance.

That is what we found then, and we are finding the same thing now, consistent on the research. I have, for those who are interested, if any of the offices are interested, 17 different examples of the formation of teratomas

by embryonic stem cell work in lab animals.

Let's not go down this road of unethical, speculative research. I am sure the research is interesting to some. But the Government needs to pursue what is best for Americans suffering from diseases and injuries. That is what our standard should be in this.

We have an enormous ethical hurdle of killing young human life for this research purpose, and we have an area that needs more funding in the adult stem cell, cord blood, amniotic fluid, and that money is being diverted to other places.

Now let us move from that ethical to the practical question: Should we put millions or billions of dollars into interesting, speculative research on tumor-forming embryonic stem cells or should we put our money where we are already getting strong results with adult stem cell work, cord blood, amniotic fluid, other areas where there is no ethical problem?

Adult stem cells have no ethical strings attached. You can get them from an adult patient without causing the patient harm, you can harvest them from the rich cord blood, and as noted in the Journal of the American Medical Association on March 7 of this year, they can be obtained from amniotic fluid, which I previously cited, without causing harm to the unborn child.

Defying the naysayers, who said this could not work or would not work, there are so many confirmed adult pluripotent stem cells, pluripotent cells, that means they can form a number of different types of cell types, previously thought to only exist in the embryos, can turn into virtually any cell in the body.

And here I want to show--first, let us go to the chart of the areas that were having treatments taking place by adult stem cell therapy. I wish to hold this up. I do not think this is a complete set of areas but 72 current human--this is in humans--clinical applications using adult stem cells: blood conditions, autoimmune, bladder disease, cancer, cardiovascular, liver disease, ocular, wounds and injuries, metabolic disorders.

You can see the list of 72 different areas that are being treated with adult stem cells in humans, in human trials. I wish to hold up to my colleagues--I will be happy to provide this to any offices that would like it--it is about an inch-thick binder of ``New Reasons for Hope.'' These are recent developments published since Congress's stem cell debate and vote of 2006 and the adult stem cell research and other alternative to embryonic stem cell work and research.

This is from June 2006 to March of 2007. Here are the number of additional areas that we have gotten successful work taking place in each of those. I wish to show this as a folder--I have shown it before to my colleagues--if anybody would like to see this. These are the recent advances in adult stem cell research and other alternatives. This is a binder about 4 inches thick, full of the front pages, just the first pages of the research in these fields of what is taking place. There needs to be more taking place in this field to get more of the treatments for more people like David Foege.

If people want to go to the Web site of ClinicalTrials.gov and pull up the latest number of trials and studies of places that are recruiting patients or are filled and no longer recruiting, it pulls up 1,422 studies currently ongoing. This is the first of 50 pages from ClinicalTrials.gov of the various areas and uses of adult stem cells that are going on right now.

Let's look at the money chart. Presently, there is no prohibition against anybody developing new embryonic stem cell lines legally. If a private group or a state wants to develop a new embryonic stem cell line, they can. The limitation is on the use of Federal taxpayer dollars in research areas on newly established embryonic stem cell lines. But if a private group wants to develop an embryonic stem cell line or a State, they can do that now.

Let's look at the funding that has gone into embryonic stem cell research, both human and nonhuman. In fiscal year 2006, the last year that we have full data for, human embryonic stem cell research, $37.8 million, nonhuman embryonic stem cell research, $110.4 million; for 2002 to 2006, human embryonic stem cell research, $132.1 million, nonhuman embryonic stem cell research, $481.7 million; for a total of $613.9 million in embryonic stem cell research. We are putting a lot of money into embryonic stem cell research. Still the scoreboard of where we are getting humans treated after $613.9 million, stem cell research human applications, adult, we have two treatment areas with binders full of information, with 1,422 study trials. We have zero on the embryonic, after 25 years of knowing about this, 10 years of knowing about it in humans, and after $613 million in funding.

After some period of time, should we not think, wouldn't it be better if Dr. David Foege were being treated in the United States instead of Thailand and we had more of that work that is getting him treated taking place here rather than in other places around the world? Wouldn't it be better to take the $613 million that could yield more treatments, if that is what we are after, wouldn't it be better to take that $613 million and say: Let's put more in adult stem cell research where it is yielding results? Doesn't that make sense? Isn't that the right thing to do?

Where we have all of this that is producing results, after 25 years we don't have anything here. That is not fair to say. I am sure we have interesting research information that has come up through that research of that $613 million. I am sure there has been useful research, but it involves the destruction of young human life.

Before people who are watching this think: You have a cure for me in the adult stem cell area, I want to make sure to put forward that many of these are in clinical trials today. Not all of these are widely available yet. However, there has been success in all of these areas using adult stem cells. For some of these treatments adult stem cells were the main component. In others adult stem cells were the part that helped the main component to work. All of these are real and legitimate.

On the eve of last summer's biological debate, some scientists took it upon themselves to criticize this list by publishing a letter in the Journal of Science. In January this year, Science published a response to this initial letter. It is important that we put forward here the context of the adult stem cell treatment that has yielded so many human treatments to date. I want to put this in context.

In their letter ``Adult Stem Cell Treatments for

Diseases?'' S. Smith et al. claim that we misrepresent a list

of adult stem cell treatments benefiting patients.

But it is the Letter's authors who misrepresent our

statements and the published literature, dismissing as

irrelevant the many scientists and patients who have shown

the benefits of adult stem cells.

We have stated that adult stem cell applications have

``helped,'' ``benefited,'' and ``improved'' patient

conditions. Smith et al.'s Supporting Online Material

repeatedly notes patient improvement from these cells. We

have never stated that these treatments are ``generally

available,'' ``cures,'' or ``fully tested in all required

phases of clinical trials and approved by the U.S. Food and

Drug Administration (FDA).'' Some studies do not require

prior FDA approval, and even the nine supposedly ``fully

approved'' treatments acknowledged by Smith et al. would not

be considered ``cures'' or ``generally available'' to the

public at this stage of research.

The insistence that no benefit is real until after FDA

approval is misplaced. Such approval is not a medical

standard to evaluate patient benefit, but an agency

determination that benefits outweigh risks in a broad class

of patients.

Physicians and patients use an evidentiary standard. Our

list of 72 applications, [is] compiled from peer-reviewed

articles, documents observable and measurable benefit to

patients, a necessary step toward formal FDA approval and

what is expected of new, cutting-edge medical applications.

As this debate moves forward, I look forward to sharing the stories of some of the real patients who have benefited from ethical adult stem cell research. We need more patients treated. We have more patients who need treatment. We have an area of high-yield Federal dollar investment where it should go, and we don't have the ethical barriers. We should be putting that money there; 72 to 0, that is the score. There are at least 72 human treatments and applications using adult stem cells. There are no human treatments with embryonic stem cells. With the rate of tumor formation which I previously noted, none seemed to be on the horizon soon.

This is acknowledged by some scientists. Notably, Science carried a piece in 2005 in which the authors note:

. . . the clinical benefits of the research are years or

maybe decades away. This is a message that desperate families

and patients will not want to hear.

Yet we do have a message that desperate families and patients do want to hear; that is that we have treatments on the horizon, and we do in the adult and cord blood and amniotic fluid. We need the research money.

Harvard stem cell researcher David Shaywitz wrote in a 2005 Washington Post op-ed:

While stem cell advocates have helped voters connect

embryonic stem cell research with compelling images of

patients who might one day benefit from treatment, such

therapies are unlikely to emerge soon enough to benefit most

current proponents. . . .

. . . scientists must do a better job of articulating the

limitations of our existing acknowledge, taking care to

emphasize not only the ultimate therapeutic potential of

these cells, but also how far we are from achieving such

therapies.

Which road will we choose? Will we choose the ethical adult stem cell road that holds great promise and is currently producing treatments, or will we choose the unethical embryonic stem cell road that tramples on human dignity and has produced tumors to date? That is the point of the discussion.

This is not just an academic discussion, nor is it just a policy discussion. It involves real people. I showed you one person who was a real person. I started off with talking about David Foege who is excited about being alive. Let me show you Jacki Rabon, a paraplegic. I met Jacki last year. She has continued to improve. I want to share her story with you.

She lives in central Illinois. She had come to DC last year with her mother and sister because she wanted to tout her successful adult stem cell treatment. The courage of Jacki and many others like her is truly amazing. Years earlier, as an active 16-year-old, she was paralyzed in an automobile accident. As the car was flipping multiple times, Jacki was thrown from the vehicle and landed on her back on a country road. Her dreams of earning a volleyball scholarship for college were shattered.

In a letter sent to me last year, Jacki wrote this:

That day changed my outlook, my future aspirations and my

complete life. Before the accident I was a very active 16-

year-old. I played volleyball in school and was very good. I

had hopes of going to college on a volleyball scholarship. I

truly was living a nightmare after this tragedy. I really

thought my life was over. I couldn't imagine not playing

volleyball anymore, jumping on my trampoline with my young

nephew, chasing after my niece or just taking a walk around

my small community. Not only does something like this change

the victim but it also disrupts and seriously affects your

family.

I spent a little over a month in the hospital. I had back

surgery to stabilize my back. I had a fracture at the T12

area, which made me a paraplegic. I had no feeling below the

belly button. I had to learn to become independent again. I

had to learn to dress, bathe, transfer from place to place,

and take care of my personal hygiene and toiletry issues. It

was so difficult and I struggled with these once simple

tasks. After I accomplished these I was released and allowed

to come home. I was simply told, ``You'll never walk again.''

That was my prognosis!

I got back to school a few months later and that was

another adjustment. Everything looks and works differently

when you are sitting in a wheelchair. I had to deal with a

lot of depression and sadness. But I tried to continue with

my life the best way that I could. I truly believe that my

faith got me through. If it wasn't for this amazing love of

God and my strong will and determination I don't know if I

could have proceeded with what my life had become. But I have

great determination along with the comforting faith and I

didn't intend on giving up that easily. I wanted to give life

another opportunity with my new ``lifestyle.''

Can you imagine the anguish of being a 16-year-old, your whole life in front of you, and then being confronted with this sort of tragedy?

Jacki was very fortunate, however, to have so many people who were looking out for her. Her pastor saw a PBS show called ``The Miracle Cell,'' about a procedure called olfactory mucosa transplantation being done in Portugal by Dr. Carlos Lima. The work involved transplanting adult stem cells from spinal cord patients' own sinus area into their spinal cord at the initial injury site.

This gave Jacki real hope. Continuing her letter, she wrote:

I listened to amazing recovery of returned sensation and

even the ability to walk again with continued rehab from

others after having this surgery. I remember thinking,

``There's my chance!'' I knew I wanted to pursue this

possibility for me.

My mom and I started researching this procedure on the

Internet and collected as much information that we could. We

discovered a Spinal Cord Injury Institute getting ready to

open in Detroit, Michigan, that summer. This institute was

closely associated with Dr. Lima. We called to see if we

could get an appointment to go and meet Dr. Steve Hinderer

and asked about the procedure in depth and inquire about my

chances of getting it done.

I did go to Detroit and was told that I could well be a

good candidate. I was given the guidelines and criteria for

having this done. After many months of additional testing, x-

rays, etc., I was accepted.

This was very exhilarating for me. I had read about the

success stories of the individuals that have gone before me.

Their various success stories gave me so much hope!

I had so much support from my family, friends, church,

community and surrounding areas to raise the $50.000.000

needed to have this surgery. Without this overwhelming

support I could not have gone forward with this incredible

opportunity.

I went to Portugal in October 2005. I had the procedure

done on October 29th. My experience in Portugal was not all

pleasant. My mom and I had to deal with the language barrier

and the unfamiliar culture. I returned to the states on

November 5th. I rested at home for a few weeks then went to

Detroit to the Institute for aggressive rehab. Rehab was very

tiring and indeed very aggressive. It was an exhausting

experience but a very rewarding one. It was there that I

took my first steps on the parallel bars. I was up!

My progress since undergoing this surgery has been amazing!

I have a lot of hip movement, some tingling and heaviness in

my legs. I have continued with my rehab regimen at home. I

have leg braces that were fitted to me. I can walk on

parallel bars and have begun walking with a walker. I am up

on my feet again! That's the most satisfying feeling. Unless

you have been confined in a wheelchair for an extended amount

of time you can't really know how rewarding it is to be

standing again.

This brings me to the ongoing debate over adult stem cell

research. I did not think a lot about this issue before the

accident but now it has sparked a great interest within me.

First, I am very much against embryonic stem cell research

and advancement. I do not support this aspect at all. The

killing of human life is appalling to me. But with adult stem

cell and non-embryonic stem cell research I have become an

advocate. My personal experience with adult stem cell

transplantation should awaken the United States to the

unlimited possibilities. This technique is simply, ``your

body healing itself.'' Medical research in the United States

has always been respected and admired for the advances toward

cure for cancer, arthritis treatments and medication, heart

disease and other well-known diseases and ailments. But when

it comes to spinal cord injuries the U.S. is very much in the

negative category. We as taxpayers pay more money in the

daily care of a spinal cord injury victim than we do on a

cure. Now why is that? The medical society treats the injury

at the onset then teaches the individual to live in a

wheelchair and function accordingly. Then they are sent home

and told, ``You will never walk again.'' I experienced that

first hand.

But I am walking again. I have goals of walking by the end

of the year with my braces and crutches. This was made

possible by the procedure in Portugal--Portugal, not the

United States--and aggressive rehab. But I had to leave the

comfort of my home and country and travel to a foreign area

to get this done. Now that is sad, isn't it?

This tragedy that happened to me can happen to anyone. It

could be your wife, husband, son, daughter or friend. What

would you want for them? Simply a statement, ``You'll never

walk again'' or ``Never give up hope there is a better option

for you.''

Jacki Rabon writes:

Wake up United States! We are missing out. Let's look at

the issue in a more personal level--I can walk again.

Sincerely,

Jacki Rabon,

Waverly, IL.

These are the moving words this courageous young lady wrote last summer.

Jacki's progress does continue. We received an e-mail from Jacki's mom, Becki, in the last few weeks. Becki Rabon writes:

Jacki is doing wonderfully. She did have a slight hip

problem a few weeks ago. She was experiencing a lot of pain.

We had x-rays, Ultrasounds and lab work done.

Thank God, it was only tightness in her hip muscles. The

pain of course was not good . . . but it was in a way that is

good since Jacki is getting more feeling in her hips.

Otherwise, she is still walking with her braces and a

walker at our church. She walks independently now. All I do

is help her with getting the braces on and stabilizing the

walker while she stands up. Then she can walk by herself. The

distance has increased considerably. The next step for her is

to start walking outside and at home. She needs to be on more

normal terrain.

This is an amazing story, and the science that has gone into Jacki's

treatment is truly revolutionary, miraculous. Adult stem cell therapy-- what could it do with another $600 million? How far along could we be?

A June 2006 study in the Journal of Spinal Cord Medicine reported on Dr. Lima having transplanted nasal stem cells into seven patients with spinal cord injury. The patients regained some motor function and sensation, and two patients showed bladder control improvement.

Most of the adult stem cell work in this area is still being done in lab animals, but it is already starting to have human applications. You have to ask yourself, why would we want to go down the unethical embryonic stem cell road when the doors are already being opened by adult stem cells and you already have these types of human stories taking place? Why, when we have something that is working?

Shown in this picture is Jacki Rabon.

I am going to tell an amazing story about Dr. Dennis Turner. He came in to testify in the Senate Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Science and Technology. He testified in 2004. He suffered from Parkinson's disease. I want to read portions of his testimony. I show you a picture of Dr. Dennis Turner. He stated:

For 14 years I've had Parkinson's Disease. This

irreversible disease involves the slow destruction of

specialized cells in the brain, called Dopamine Neurons. By

early 1991 I suffered extreme shaking of the right side of my

body, stiffness in my gait and movements. After some years of

medication, I developed fluctuation and poor response to

Sinemet. This made daily activities needing the coordinated

use of both hands hard or impossible, such as putting in

contact lenses. My disability prevented me from using my

right arm.

Other than my Parkinson's symptoms I was physically very

active and fit. Because of this Dr. Levesque felt that I'd be

a good candidate for an experimental treatment. He explained

that he would take a very small tissue sample from my brain,

removing its adult neural stem cells. He would then multiply

and mature these cells into Dopamine Neurons, then inject

these cells back into the left side of my brain. He proposed

treating only the left side because it controls the right

side of the body, the side with the most severe Parkinson's

symptoms.

Dr. Levesque did not tell me that this treatment would

permanently cure my condition. Science has yet to learn what

causes Parkinson's Disease, much less how to remove it.

However, since this cell-replacement approach had never been

tried in a human patient we hoped for the best. And since my

only other realistic alternative was to continue growing

worse until I eventually died, I decided to have the surgical

procedures in 1999, one to remove the tissue and another to

inject the cells. I was awake for both procedures, under

local anesthesia.

Soon after having the cells injected my Parkinson's

symptoms began to improve. My trembling grew less and less,

until to all appearances it was gone, only slightly

reappearing if I became upset. Dr. Levesque had me tested by

a Neurologist, who said he wouldn't have known I had

Parkinson's if he had met me on the street. I was once again

able to use my right hand and arm normally, enjoying

activities that I had given up hope of ever doing.

Since being diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease my condition

had slowly, but continuously worsened. I can't say with

certainty what my condition would have become if Dr. Levesque

had not used my own adult stem cells to treat me. But I have

no doubt that because of this treatment I've enjoyed five

years of quality life that I feared had passed me by.

Last year, after 4 years of being virtually symptom free,

my Parkinson's symptoms began reappearing in my body's left

side. Today I have various degrees of trembling in both

hands, although I feel that the left is slightly worse.

Nevertheless, I wouldn't hesitate for a second to have Dr.

Levesque use my adult stem cells to treat me a second time,

since in my case they were safe, effective, and involved no

risk of rejection.

Because of my improvements through Dr. Levesque's treatment

I've been able to indulge in my passion for big game

photography these past 5 years.

This man suffering severe Parkinson's for 5 years being able to indulge in his passion for big game photography.

While on safari in 2001 I scrambled up a tree to avoid

being run over by a Rhino. I swam in the South Atlantic with

Great White Sharks. Two weeks ago I returned from Africa

after photographing Cheetahs and Leopards in the wild.

This is a man with severe Parkinson's.

Here are a few examples of the pictures I took. They

represent memories and experiences I feel I have Dr. Levesque

to thank for. I came here to offer him my sincere gratitude,

and to offer others with Parkinson's a concrete reason for

hope.

This summarizes my history with Parkinson's and the

positive effects I experienced through a treatment that used

my own adult stem cells. I'm very happy with its results and

would dearly love to have a second treatment.

Mr. President, I cite this example because here is a route forward for us. We want to treat people with Parkinson's. Here is a route forward that has been shown in a human clinical trial setting, with positive results for a period of time. Why would we want to waste that? Why wouldn't we want to fund that and to use it aggressively?

Thank you very much, Mr. President. I yield the floor and will continue to use more of my time later.

Mr. President, I wish to resume the discussion on embryonic stem cell research. I wish to resume the discussion on adult stem cell successes and why we should not move forward on destroying more human life for the purposes of research.

I wish to start out with a simple picture, a picture of one child, Hannah. She was a frozen embryo. I wish to just go through this briefly because we talk about frozen embryos as though this is something you can discard and there is really no significance here, or if there is, it is minimal, it is not really human, it is just something that is sitting there in a frozen state and we should just research on this person. I note this because Hannah was a frozen embryo. She was adopted. She was implanted. Then here we are looking at her in April of 2001 at age 28 months.

I met Hannah. She has been in my office. She is a bright, young, vivacious girl. I point out that she starts out as what we are talking about researching on here--she starts out being frozen, alive, adopted as an embryo, arrives in a clinic, is thawed, implantated, and develops a heartbeat. Here is a picture of her at 21 weeks. We can see her, and we can see the development.

The reason I point this out, and I guess it should be obvious to everybody, but what we are talking about is something in embryology books that is defined as human. It is defined as a person with a 46- chromosomes. It is defined as a unique person who will never be recreated. We are defining and talking about somebody. If these frozen embryos are adopted, they can be implanted and grow into human beings.

Hannah as she was in April of 2001, Hannah who was in my office.

I urge more people to look at this as a possible option. A number of people have embryos at IVF clinics, frozen embryos at IVF clinics. This is a viable option if people don't want to have them implanted in themselves. If they are extra, they could consider that there are a number of people who cannot conceive who want to adopt. I urge people to look at this as a possible and viable option and a beautiful option that people would look at. This is happening quite a few times in places across the United States. It is important. It is a great option.

My wife and I have adopted two children--not at the frozen embryo stage

but at a later stage. I can say with all candor, it is a wonderful thing. It has been a great gift to our family to have two of our children who are adopted. With the rest of our family, it has just been fabulous for all of us.

I hope people will look at this as a viable option. It is a viable option technologically. This is something people can do. You can do this today. This can take place. It does take place. It is a regular event that takes place. It is something you can feel good about in doing and having a beautiful child who is here and functioning and in the world and bringing joy to people's eyes.

Our two adopted children are both 9, and they bring great joy to everybody they are around. Even when they are bugging their older sister, they bring her joy. It is just a great thing to do, and I really hope we can do a lot more of this if people would consider this as a real option rather than just saying these are extra embryos or these are throwaways or they are going to be disposed of anyway. Why not look for the best option? Why not look for this beautiful option which is out there instead of saying: Well, we can't do anything with them anyway; let's just discard them.

There is another option here. There is a different chance. There is another hope. That child, then, can bring into the world so much joy and possibilities that are endless. Why not that one? What is wrong with that option? I hope people will really look at this as a real chance and something they can do.

In my earlier remarks, I read a definition from an embryology textbook which affirmed that each individual life begins as a 46- chromosome embryo. The Presiding Officer did. I did. Senator Harkin from Iowa did. Textbook definitions are good, but living examples are often even better, and that is what I am showing in this chart. Of course, each one of us alive today is an example that life begins at an embryonic stage because we were all once embryos. Another clear example of this truth is those children today--137, I am told, with 16 currently in utero--who used to be numbered among the so-called spare or leftover embryos. That is not as many as I hope it will be, and I hope in the future we can have a lot more.

Last year, I had the privilege of meeting one of these young children, a young girl named Hannah. We can see her life growth along this continuum in this chart. Of course, if she is terminated in any phase along this way, she is not out here. Life is that continuum. I would like to draw the attention of my colleagues to this and in particular ask, how can we just wantonly destroy these embryos for research purposes with taxpayer funding because they are allegedly spare, left over, or just going to be destroyed anyway? It is wrong to turn living human persons into research objects to be exploited. I believe those embryos which have been adopted make this point very well.

I also wish to note that currently in the United States, it is not illegal anywhere in the country for a person to donate an embryo to develop a stem cell, an embryonic stem cell line. It is not illegal anywhere. What we are talking about in the Senate today is expanding the Federal taxpayer funding for human embryonic stem cell research. We are talking about taxpayer funding of this research that is considered highly unethical to a number of our fellow Americans. It is something we do not need to do.

On the point of not needing to do fund this research with taxpayer dollars, I ask unanimous consent that an article be printed in the Record at the end of my statement.

This was an article posted at CNN at 4:05 eastern daylight time that ``Type I diabetics live without insulin in stem cell experiment.'' This is just out on CNN this afternoon. ``Thirteen young diabetics in Brazil . . . '' That is a point I have been making. This research should be done in the United States. Instead, it is going other places:

Thirteen young diabetics in Brazil have ditched their

insulin shots and need no other medication, thanks to a risky

but promising treatment with their own stem cells--apparently

the first time such a feat has been accomplished.

This is just a highlighting of this particular article. Again, the research is being done in Brazil. You will see some consistency on points. If you followed my earlier comments, I was talking about a gentleman who was getting a heart treatment with his own stem cells in Bangkok, Thailand; a young lady in Illinois who received treatment for her spinal cord injury, a paraplegic, in Portugal. Now this diabetic work is being done in Brazil. All of this adult stem cell work that is taking place is outside of the country rather than being done here and us funding and doing it in America. If we are losing the battle in the research anywhere, it seems to be in the adult stem cell field that is producing these types of treatments.

Let me proceed. This is an AP story. It was on CNN. I am reading:

Thirteen young diabetics in Brazil have ditched their

insulin shots and need no other medication thanks to a risky

but promising treatment with their own stem cells--

apparently the first time such a feat has been

accomplished. Though too early to call it a cure, the

procedure has enabled the young people, who have Type 1

diabetes, to live insulin-free so far, some as long as

three years. The treatment involves stem cell transplants

from the patients' own blood.

``It's the first time in the history of Type I diabetes

where people have gone with no treatment whatsoever . . . no

medications at all, with normal blood sugars,'' said study

co-author Dr. Richard Burt of Northwestern University's

medical school in Chicago, Illinois.

While the procedure can be potentially life-threatening,

none of the 15 patients in the study died or suffered lasting

side effects. But it didn't work for two of them. Larger,

more rigorous studies are needed to determine whether stem

cell transplants could become standard treatment for people

with the disease once called juvenile diabetes. It is less

common than Type 2 diabetes, which is associated with

obesity.

The hazards of stem cell transplantation also raise

questions about whether the study should have included

children. One patient was as young as 14. Dr. Lainie Ross, a

medical ethicist at the University of Chicago, said the

researchers should have studied adults first before exposing

young teens to the potential harms of stem cell transplant,

which include infertility and late-onset cancers. In

addition, Ross said that the study should have had a

comparison group to make sure the treatment was indeed better

than standard diabetes care.

Burt, who wrote the study protocol, said the research was

done in Brazil because U.S. doctors were not interested in

the approach. The study was approved by ethics committees in

Brazil, he said, adding that he personally believes it was

appropriate to do the research in children as well as adults,

as long as the Brazilian ethics panels approved. Burt and

other diabetes experts called the results an important step

forward.

``It's the threshold of a very promising time for the

field,'' said Dr. Jay Skyler of the Diabetes Research

Institute at the University of Miami. Skyler wrote an

editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association,

which published the study, saying the results are likely to

stimulate research that may lead to methods of preventing or

reversing Type 1 diabetes.

``These are exciting results. They look impressive,'' said

Dr. Gordon Weir of Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston,

Massachusetts. Still, Weir cautioned that more studies are

needed to make sure the treatment works and is safe. ``It's

really too early to suggest to people that this is a cure,''

he said.

The patients involved were ages 14 to 31 and had newly

diagnosed Type 1 diabetes. An estimated 12 million to 24

million people worldwide--including 1 to 2 million in the

United States--have this form of diabetes, which is typically

diagnosed in children or young adults. An autoimmune disease,

it occurs when the body attacks insulin-producing cells in

the pancreas. Insulin is needed to regulate blood sugar

levels, which, when too high, can lead to heart disease,

blindness, nerve problems and kidney damage.

Burt said the stem cell transplant is designed to stop the

body's immune attack on the pancreas.

A study published last year described a different kind of

experimental transplant, using pancreas cells from donated

cadavers, that enabled a few diabetics to give up insulin

shots. But that requires lifelong use of anti-rejection

medicine, which isn't needed by the Brazil patients since the

stem cells were their own.

The 15 diabetics were treated at a bone marrow center at

the University of Sao Paulo. All had newly diagnosed

diabetes, and their insulin-producing cells had not been

destroyed. That timing is key, Burt said. ``If you wait too

long,'' he said, ``you've exceeded the body's ability to

repair itself.''

And he talks about repairing itself later in this article. I wish to hit that point. The procedure involves stimulating the body into producing new stem cells and harvesting them from the patient's blood. Next comes several days of high-dose chemotherapy, which virtually shuts down the patient's immune system and stops destruction of

the few remaining insulin-producing cells in the body. This requires hospitalization and potent drugs to fend off infection. The harvested stem cells, when injected back into the body, build a new healthier immune system that does not attack the insulin-producing cells.

Patients were hospitalized for about 3 weeks. Many had side effects. One developed pneumonia, the only severe complication. The doctors changed the drug regime after treatments failed in the first patient who ended up needing more insulin than before the study, and another patient also relapsed. The remaining 13 live ``a normal life without taking insulin,'' said the study coauthor, Dr. Julio Voltareli of the University of Sao Paulo. ``They all went back to their lives.''

The patients enrolled in the study at different times so the length of time they have been insulin-free also differs. Dr. Burgess had some success using the same procedure in 170 patients with other autoimmune diseases, including lupus and multiple sclerosis; one patient with an autoimmune form of blindness can now see, Dr. Burgess said, and then he had this quote: The body has a tremendous potential to repair.

The study was partly funded by the Brazilian Ministry of Health and Genzyme Corporation, a maker of blood sugar monitoring products.

Now, why are we not doing these treatments in America? Why would we not be funding this sort of work? We do not have unlimited amounts of funds to go around. We are putting $613 million into speculative embryonic stem cell research that has produced no cures. Yet we are having people from the United States go to Bangkok and to Portugal and to Brazil to get these treatments that are financed by the Brazilian Ministry of Health, along with a private corporation that is the maker of blood sugar monitoring products. Why is it not being done here? There are now 13 young diabetics who ditched their insulin shots. That is beautiful news. It should be done here.

Yet we are starving this field that is producing so many results, putting in $613 million into embryonic stem cell research that is highly speculative, that is considered unethical by many of our fellow citizenry in the United States, and is producing no treatments or cures, while people are going to Brazil to be able to deal with diabetes or to Portugal to deal with spinal cord injuries or to Thailand to deal with congestive heart failure and heart disease.

Now is something wrong with this? I think it clearly is wrong when we are not seeing these treatments here, the treatments are going to other places, and we are not funding them. We need to do more in the adult stem cell field, in the cord blood field, we need to do more in amniotic fluid, we need to do more in the placenta stem cell field. American citizens should not have to go to Brazil and other places to get this cutting-edge technology.

Yet we will spend a lot of time debating on the floor over embryonic stem cells, or the need to do research on both adult and embryonic, but the problem is we do not have infinite amounts of money. We do have a limited research budget. The money we are putting into the embryonic field, destroying human life at taxpayer expense, does not go into adult stem cell work. It does not go into other areas where we could do more research, to get the results that would treat people so that diabetics do not need their insulin shots. It is cutting-edge work being done somewhere else. We are not funding it.

I want to talk, too, about another aspect of this that I have not brought up previously, and that is private-sector funding. I note on this diabetes story that was out on the AP wire that there was a private corporation, Genzyme Corporation, a maker of blood sugar monitoring products.

It is not illegal anywhere to do embryonic stem cell research in this country, and if it is so promising in the health care field, one would think there would be heavy private-sector investment taking place in embryonic stem cell research. If this is producing and holds the key to curing Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and diabetes, then one would think there would be a flood of private-sector money coming into this field to develop and to get the early patents on some of the work.

Let's see what is happening in the investor community on this. How many private investors are going into it? We can talk about following the money into the field. This is a July 17, 2006, edition of the New York Sun, an article written by Harold Furchtgott-Roth, former FCC Commissioner. I wish to quote some from this article. I will put this in. He says this:

For investors, the debate over Federal funding of embryonic

stem cell research is an indication that profits are remote.

In many, if not most, areas of technology--including

electronics, chemistry, and computing--the frontiers of

research and development are spearheaded by private business.

Where profits are a powerful inducement, innovation needs

little federal funding.

From pharmaceuticals to electronic monitoring equipment,

much of medical research advances to the drumbeat of

capitalism. Innovative ideas are rewarded. Tens of billions

of private dollars in America and around the world finance

new research because it offers visible roads to rewards.

What does he say about stem cell research? We knew this to be true, that there is heavy investment in the commercial sector in pharmaceutical supplies and electronics and computing.

One of the big driving areas is the private sector or the investors going into these fields and investing heavily. So what are they doing in stem cell research, in embryonic stem cell research today?

To date, private investment in stem cell research has been

relatively small and unrewarding. Several publicly traded but

relatively small American companies

He lists a couple--

. . . conduct research and development on stem cells. Many privately held companies also pursue stem cell research, but venture capital backing for stem cell research is waning.

It is not growing, it is waning.

Nor is there substantial private research and development

migrating abroad. American financial institutions raise

enormous funds to invest in businesses engaged in medical

research both in America and abroad--

We certainly know that to be true--

but little if any of that money targets foreign investment in

stem cell research companies.

The current policy does not appear to have left America

backward in the basic science of stem cell research.

According to a recent study in ``Nature Biotechnology,''

American scientists account for the dominant share of

research publications on embryonic stem cell research, and

the number of publications is growing rapidly. Perhaps

American science will be even more dominant with greater

Federal funding, but the stimulus for that funding should not

be that we are falling hopelessly behind the rest of the

world.

Mr. President, I ask that the rest of this article in its entirety be inserted at the conclusion of my comments.

Mr. President, my point in saying this is that we know this is true. We know that in the medical health field, if there are some great results that are coming that could be patentable or provide treatments--that the medical sector of our economy is growing as a percentage of the gross national product, that I think is somewhere around 15 percent now, growing faster, that there is a heavy investment in medical research taking place, we know that in the pharmaceutical industry, we know that in the medical treatment areas that is taking place.

So why is that not happening in embryonic stem cells? The reason is because it is not producing any results. Instead, we have health ministries and corporations going abroad to make these investments in the adult field when they feel like there is not sufficient interest here taking place.

That should tell us something; that is, the private sector is not putting money in. Indeed, the private-sector research is waning. These are all indicators that we ought to be looking at and asking ourselves: What is taking place?

Now earlier I covered some of the advances in stem cell research that has happened, and I note I wish to build on the statement put forward by today's AP story on Type 1 Diabetes being treated in Brazil with adult stem cells and my comments about the lack of private-sector investment.

I wish to hit another point as to why the private sector is not investing in embryonic stem cell research. I made it part of this presentation earlier, but I wish to make it stronger now; that is,

that embryonic stem cells produce tumors.

This is continuing to come out in all the data, and I think it is part of the reason why you do not see private investors going into this field. If this is the pharmaceutical field and the drugs you are treating people with are producing tumors, it is unlikely that that drug is going to get approved by the FDA, it is unlikely it is going to move forward in any sort of drug delivery system or it is going to be accepted by the public if there is a high likelihood that you are going to get tumors.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to put this set of documents in at the end of my statement.

This is a series of front pages of articles of the various scientific publications where we have had, to date, tumors being developed by embryonic stem cells. These are in animal models because, of course, we do not have any human clinical trials that are taking place yet with embryonic stem cells. These are all in the animal field. But we are seeing continuously in the research results, as I stated earlier, that the embryonic stem cells injected into animal models are creating teratomas, creating tumors.

This, as I quoted earlier, happened in the fetal tissue debate of 15 years ago, when they were creating teratomas or tumors, and we are now seeing the tumors come up again consistently in the research data on embryonic stem cell work. And here--this gets quite technical. But I wish to read some of the quotations in these various articles, that if any of my colleagues would like to look it up, this will be in the Record.

Here is a research article from 2004, when cultures were transplanted in diabetic mice--we were just talking about a successful diabetic treatment in humans--this is in diabetic mice. They formed teratomas-- again those are tumors--and did not reverse the hyperglycemic state. This is the first page of a 2004 scientific publication. Here is an embryonic stem cell publication, and this is the front page of this article, that is out in a 2006 article: Embryonic stem cells derived neuroprogeny, more than 70 percent of mice that received these types of embryonic stem cells developed teratomas, thus posing a major safety problem is what this article noted, that 70 percent of mice developed tumors. It does not sound like that one is going very well.

We have another one in the Stem Cell publication, again 2006 publication, developed severe teratomas, in this particular publication, using human embryonic stem cells again in lab rats, grafted into lab rats. That one is not going very well.

Here is a 2005 article from a publication: Four weeks postimplantation, cells implanted in high numbers formed teratomas in the majority of the animals implanted. That one is not going very well.

Here is a Brazilian publication involving brain tissue: Unlimited self-renewal in high differentiation poses the risk of tumor induction after engraftment. This is December of 2004. That one is taking place, and it is not going very well.

Here is another publication. This one is from 2003. Conclusions: Transplanted ES cells can be grafted. The cells will, however, form a tumor if they leak into an improper space such as the thoracic cavity. Now we have a bigger problem. If the stem cells leak into another area, they form tumors in other parts of the body. That is not going very well.

Here is another publication. This is a 2005 publication. When the cultured cells were transplanted into diabetic mice, they reversed the hyperglycemic case for 3 weeks, but the rescue failed due to immature teratoma formation and then formed cancer cells. So they did something for 3 weeks, and that didn't work out very well.

Here is another publication. This is out of Washington University, 2004. Results suggest transplanting ES cells into the injured spinal cord does not improve locomotive recovery and can lead to tumor-like growth of cells, accompanied by increased debilitation, morbidity, and mortality. That one is not going well.

That is a set of publications. This is just the front pages of these that I am entering into the Record. My point is not to belittle embryonic stem cells. My point is this is highly consistent with the fetal tissue work earlier and what is working. We have a route that is moving. Why would we move on forward, putting $620 million of Federal money into an area that has not worked for 25 years.

I recognize my colleague from Alabama.

I am happy to yield for a question.

Yes. My colleague states the obvious. It is when you get that first set of chromosomes from your mother and father that your hair color, so many of your features are determined. It doesn't change. That is your genetic material, and you get it from the very earliest instance.

I have a picture of one here. This is Hannah, one of the first snowflake babies. It is a pretty simple and direct story. Just like you and me, they started out as embryos. They went into a frozen state for a period of time. Then they were allowed to be adopted by other individuals and implanted into a mother's womb and then grew in a normal process that takes place. The point you made earlier that I think should be so obvious to all of our colleagues is this is Hannah here and this is Hannah at an earlier stage when she is an embryo, just as we were at one point in time.

With Federal taxpayer dollars; that is what we are talking about.

That is correct. It is not a crime today.

That is correct, and that Federal taxpayer funds could be used to experiment on those human embryonic stem cell lines where the life-and-death decision had already been made.

That is correct as well.

That is correct. Any sort of private sector investment can take place, any sort of State or local investment can take place, although, as I noted in the article, the private sector does not seem to be putting much money into the field. I believe that is clearly because of a lack of results.

Well, it clearly does. It says you treat the youngest of human life as property, not as a person. You noted this is alive. Yet some would say it is not a life. It is alive, but it has not yet risen to the level of being a human life. This would say we can treat humans at the youngest age of their life continuum as property and that we will use Federal taxpayer dollars to destroy them and to do research on them at that point in time. If you can do that at earlier stages, why not later? What is the differentiation? At what point in time does this become removed from property to becoming a person as it somehow does magically in this process? My point is, the place to start is at the beginning, when the life begins. Otherwise, there is no significant place you can draw any line along the way saying at this point in time it becomes a person entitled to the protection of the law and society. Right now we are treating the youngest of humans as property.

If our objective is healing people, if that is our objective, we have a far more likely route, a route that is already producing substantial success that is lying right in front of us, without ethical concerns or dilemmas--adult stem cells, cord blood. Increasingly, in the future, in amniotic fluid we will find abundant supplies of stem cells with no moral problems whatsoever. That is what doesn't make any sense to me either. We are going to take away all human dignity from the youngest humans. We are going to do so in an arbitrary fashion because we are not saying where you develop the status of human dignity at some point in time, but we are going to take it away from you here. We are going to use Federal taxpayer dollars to destroy you. Yet we have another way that is producing good results in the adult stem cells, stem cells in your body and in mine, and this route is producing tumors. It doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense why we would invest $613 million more into the future as we have in the past since 2002. Why would you put more into this area that has all these problems? I respect my colleagues who are on the other side of this debate. They want to produce results and they want to cure people. But it seems as if all the evidence is leading us the other way without ethical dilemma. So why would we then do that, if all the evidence is pointing another way and we don't have unlimited resources, we can't put this to better, higher use, and not having hopefully people in the future have to leave our country to get adult stem cell therapies from out of country?

S. 30.

I thank my colleague from Alabama. I note for his

constituent, who sent such a kind letter, one of our lead examples is this woman shown in this picture, Jacki Rabon, who is a paraplegic, not a quadriplegic, from a car accident and was treated with adult stem cells--her own--in Portugal instead of the United States and is now walking with the aid of braces. There is tingling and feeling now throughout her legs, and hopefully that will continue. In all of these cases, it is important we get early treatments and people get treated-- and I want to see that increasingly in the United States.

She was treated with her own stem cells.

It was not necessary. The only thing that was necessary is she had to travel to Portugal.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Exhibit 1

Mr. President, I noted as the clerk reported the bill, S. 5, she reported it as an amendment to the Public Health Service Act, and that is what this debate is all about and that is what this vote is going to be about. It is going to be about public health of people in this country and around the world and whether they are going to have hope that they will see a future in which modern medical science can actually overcome and cure things such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, heart disease, spinal cord injuries, and a host of other illnesses. That is what this debate is about. It is about hope. It is about health. So today begins 20 hours of Senate debate on a bill to lift the administration's restrictions on stem cell research and bring hope to millions of people in this country who are suffering from illnesses such as ALS, juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's, spinal cord injuries, and so many other devastating diseases and conditions.

Most Americans probably find it hard to believe we are still arguing about this issue. They want more stem cell research. They have listened to the scientists. They have watched the House and Senate vote overwhelmingly during the last Congress to expand the administration's policy. Then they went to the polls in November and more often than not elected candidates who support stem cell research. So why are we still debating this? The answer, unfortunately, is simple: President Bush used his first--and so far only--veto of his administration to reject last year's stem cell bill and dash the hopes of millions of Americans. So we are back once again.

I thank my colleagues in the Senate who have worked together on this issue, starting, of course, with my colleague Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. He chaired the very first hearing in Congress on embryonic stem cells in December of 1998. In all, our Labor, Health, and Human Services and Education Appropriations Subcommittee has held 20 hearings on this research since then under the chairmanship of Senator Specter. I also thank the other Senate leaders on stem cell research, including Senator Hatch, Senator Kennedy, Senator Smith, and Senator Feinstein. So counting Senator Specter and me, there are three Republicans and three Democrats on that list, and this has truly been a bipartisan effort all the way. I thank our majority leader Senator Reid for scheduling this debate and making sure it is one of the first issues we vote on in the 110th Congress. I also thank our Republican leader Senator McConnell for working with us to schedule this debate and this vote tomorrow.

Most of all, I thank the hundreds of thousands of families and patients who never gave up, who kept up the pressure to bring this bill to the floor and who were so eager to see S. 5 sent to the President's desk. They have kept the faith and now it is our job to see that they are not disappointed.

There is probably one other entity I should thank and that is the House of Representatives, under the able leadership of Speaker Pelosi, which passed this bill earlier this year and sent it over to the Senate. I will talk a little bit later about how our bill differs from theirs, but nonetheless, the bill they passed is a bill that mirrors the same thing we are doing here, and that is to lift the restrictions on embryonic stem cell research.

Under this unanimous consent agreement we have, for information, we will debate and vote on two bills. Make no mistake, however: The only one that matters is S. 5, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act. The other bill is S. 30. This is the one bill that at long last will unleash some of the most exciting and promising research of modern times. Think of it this way: S. 5, the bill we will be debating and voting on, will take the handcuffs off of our scientists. It will take the handcuffs off so they can now begin to do the research that will lead to miraculous cures and interventions.

It is a good time to step back and ask: Why is there so much support for S. 5? Well, I have a letter signed by 525 groups endorsing this bill, including patient advocacy groups, health organizations, research universities, scientific societies, religious groups. There are 525 groups in all. They all agree Congress should pass S. 5. Why is that? Because it offers hope. I have a series of charts here which I will point to. S. 5 offers hope. I think this chart illustrates many--not all but many--of the ailments which scientists tell us embryonic stem cells could lead to interventions and cures for, including Lou Gehrig's disease, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, muscular dystrophy, anemias, severe burns, leukemia, lymphoma, bone marrow disorders, diabetes, immune deficiencies, heart disease, and spinal cord injuries. That is just to name a few. There are many more, but my colleagues get the idea of how all encompassing the approach would be if we were to get into embryonic stem cell research. It is not just focused on one thing; it is broader than that. It encompasses so many illnesses and afflictions. All told, more than 100 million Americans have diseases that one day could be treated or cured with embryonic stem cell research.

But it is not just Members of Congress saying that. No one should take our word alone. Three weeks ago Dr. Elias Zerhouni, who is the Director of the National Institutes of Health, appeared before our Appropriations subcommittee. I asked him whether scientists would have a better chance of finding new cures and treatments if the administration's current restrictions on embryonic stem cell research were lifted. Dr. Zerhouni said unequivocally: Yes. Now, Dr. Zerhouni is the Federal Government's top scientist in the area of medical research. President Bush appointed him to be the Director of the National Institutes of Health. So it took great courage on his part to say in public we need to change direction on stem cell research, but he did so because it is the truth.

This is his quote. This is what the Director of the National Institutes of Health said before the subcommittee:

It is clear today that American science would be better

served and the Nation would be better served if we let our

scientists have access to more cell lines.

It is not only NIH scientists who believe this way. Dr. J. Michael Bishop, who won the Nobel Prize in medicine, wrote recently:

The vast majority of the biomedical research community

believes that human embryonic stem cells are likely to be the

source of key discoveries related to many debilitating

diseases.

Dr. Harold Varmus, the former Director of the National Institutes of Health, who just preceded Dr. Zerhouni and who himself is a Nobel Prize winner, wrote in a letter dated yesterday:

S. 5 represents an important step forward for human

embryonic stem cell research, a new field that offers great

promise for the replacement of damaged cells, the

understanding of the mechanics of disease, and the

development and testing of new drugs. Unfortunately, current

Federal policy has not kept pace with the speed of scientific

discovery and is today of limited value to the scientific

community.

I could go on and on. We have a lot of scientists all over this country and the world who agree we should be pursuing embryonic stem cell research because it offers enormous hope for easing

human suffering. Some may ask: I thought the Federal Government already supports embryonic stem cell research. Well, here we have an interesting situation in terms of Federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

I have to take my colleagues back in time to August 9 of 2001. In an evening address starting at 9 p.m. on August 9 of 2001, the President, in an address to the Nation, said we were going to permit Federal funding for embryonic stem cells only if they were derived prior to 9 p.m. on August 9 of 2001. Any that were derived after that we could not fund research on. Well, at this time it was said there were 78 lines, 78 stem cell lines we could use. We know that is less than 21 now and many of these are in bad shape, and every single one of them contaminated on mouse feeder cells, which I will talk about in a moment. I always thought it was kind of interesting and very curious that we had this hypocrisy--I call it stem cell hypocrisy--that before 9 p.m. on August 9 of 2001, it is morally acceptable to use taxpayers' dollars to fund embryonic stem cell research. So if the stem cells were derived before 9 p.m., it is morally acceptable, but if they were derived after 9 p.m. on August 9, it is morally unacceptable. Well, I ask, what is so significant about 9 p.m. on August 9? Why couldn't it have been 8:30 p.m., 9:15 p.m., midnight, or 10 p.m? Well, I think my colleagues get the point. It is totally arbitrary--totally arbitrary. We have to ask ourselves: Why is it that Federal tax dollars can be used on embryonic stem cells derived before 9 p.m.--that is OK--but after 9 p.m., it is not OK? Please, someone tell me why 9 p.m., August 9 is the moral dividing line. It is totally arbitrary.

Even with that, we had hoped the President's policy would work, but it hasn't. Here is why. As I said earlier, on that date, the President said there were 78 stem cell lines available. We now know only 21 are eligible. It is not nearly enough to reflect the genetic diversity scientists need to develop treatments for everyone in the country. What is more, every single one--every single one of these approved lines--is contaminated by mouse feeder cells. What that means is when you take the stem cells and you propagate them, you get them to grow, you do them in a medium. You grow them in a medium. They were grown on mouse cells, mouse feeder cells, so they are all contaminated. Ask yourself: Would you want to take the possibility that somehow mouse cells are getting into your body because of stem cells? No. Many of the 21 lines are too unhealthy. They have degenerated. They are unhealthy. As a matter of fact, I have been told we are down to about right now only four.

Dr. Elizabeth Nabel, the Director of the NIH Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, said only 4 of the 21 federally approved lines are in common use by NIH-funded scientists. Only four. Dr. Jeremy Berg, another NIH Director, was a little more generous. He said there are six lines in common use. Well, four or six, you get the picture. It is not 78, it is only 4 or 6. Again, they are contaminated with mouse feeder cells. So some stem cell research is taking place, but our top scientists are working with one arm tied behind their backs because of these restrictions. It is having a chilling impact on the scientists who are thinking about entering the field.

According to Dr. Nora Volkow, Director of the NIH Drug Abuse Institute, the administration's policy is discouraging scientists from applying for NIH funding to conduct stem cell research. In a letter to me last year, she wrote:

Despite general interest and enthusiasm in the scientific

community for embryonic stem cell research, the limited

number of available lines has translated into a general lack

of research proposals.

So the President's policy, which we have had in effect since August 9, 2001, is not a way forward; it is an absolute dead end for research. It only offers false hope to the millions of people across America and the world who are suffering from diseases that could be cured or treated through embryonic stem cell research. Meanwhile, hundreds of new stem cell lines have been derived since the President's arbitrary time of August 9, 2001. The NIH estimates there are about 400 different stem cell lines worldwide. Many of those lines are uncontaminated and healthy, but they are totally off limits to federally funded scientists.

Scientists in many other countries around the world don't face these kinds of arbitrary restrictions. We have talked to researchers in England, for example. Our policy makes no sense to them. They cannot understand why stem cell lines derived on one date are fine to use, but if they are derived on another date, they are off limits. I don't understand that, either. I have wrestled with that since August 9, 2001.

If you are going to take the position that this is totally morally unacceptable and there should be no Federal funding, then we should have no Federal funding, and there are four or five lines that are now being examined and studied that should not be allowed, either. But I have not seen any amendment from anyone here that would even overturn that policy. It is a shame that we don't open these stem cell lines. Think about it this way. We don't require astronomers to explore the skies with 19th century telescopes. We don't tell our geologists to study the earth with tape measures. If we are serious about realizing the promise of stem cell research, our scientists need access to the best stem cell lines available.

Again, don't take my word for it. Dr. Story Landis runs the Stem Cell Task Force at NIH. In January, she appeared before a joint hearing of the HELP Committee, chaired by Senator Kennedy, and my subcommittee. Senator Kennedy asked her whether scientists are missing out on possible breakthroughs under the administration's current policy, and this was her answer:

Yes, we are missing out on possible breakthroughs. From a

purely scientific perspective, Federal funding of additional

cell lines is necessary to advance the field.

This is Dr. Landis, head of the Stem Cell Task Force at NIH.

So we need a stem cell policy in this country that offers true, meaningful hope to patients and their loved ones. That is what this bill, S. 5, would do. Under our bill, federally funded researchers could study any stem cell line, regardless of the date a stem cell is derived, as long as strict ethical guidelines are met.

I believe it is important to emphasize this: We have very strict ethical guidelines. First, stem cells must come from embryos that would otherwise be discarded. There are more than 400,000 embryos right now in the United States left over from fertility treatments that are currently sitting frozen in liquid nitrogen. If the contributors of those embryos--the parents, the moms and dads--have had all the children they want and they no longer need the embryos, what happens to them? Under the policy we have now, there are only two things: You can keep them frozen for the next 10,000 or 20,000 or 50,000 years, or however long, or you can discard them. That is what is happening every day at in vitro fertilization clinics across the country. Embryos are being discarded as hospital waste.

Now, you might be a couple who says: We have had all our children, and we don't want any more. We don't want to keep paying forever and ever to have the embryos frozen. We would like to donate them to stem cell research to maybe help a young person with juvenile diabetes or someone with a spinal cord injury. We would like to contribute those embryos for that research. They cannot do it. It seems to me that at least we ought to be able to allow the couples to donate them if they wish. So the real question is, Do we throw them away or use them to ease suffering? Do we throw them away or allow them to be used with these strict ethical guidelines? I think it is the second choice that is truly moral and respectful of human life.

You might even think about it this way. Embryos will be destroyed, people say. The embryo itself--about which, by the way, I will point out there is a lot of misconception. I didn't listen to it, but I read the debate in the House last year. One of the speakers--I think the former minority leader, Mr. Delay, talked about fetuses and about the protection of fetuses. A lot of people think we are talking about fetuses. We are not. We are talking about embryos. I often put a dot on a piece of paper and I say: Can anybody see what I put there? That is just how big an embryo is, which is a few dozen cells.

Well, you have to get over this idea that somehow it is a fully formed fetus

existing in a womb. That is not it at all. You might say it is alive, it has life--yes, it does--and you should not destroy that life. Well, you might destroy the embryo itself, but in taking the stem cells from it--the cells in the embryo give the embryo life. If you take the cells out and you propagate them and examine them and then maybe use those lines for curing diseases in the future, it seems to me that you are really propagating life, saving lives, and enhancing life by doing that. That is why giving people the choice of voluntarily contributing the cells is truly moral and respectful of human life.

The second ethical requirement is that couples must provide written, informed consent. Now, I might point out that some of the 21 federally approved lines that are now in existence--especially the ones from other countries--don't meet that requirement. So we need to pass S. 5 to tighten the ethical guidelines of stem cell research, so there is no question that the embryos were donated properly. Think of it this way. We have Federal money right now that could be going--and probably is-- for research on some stem cells that were provided without written informed consent. So we need to tighten down on that. S. 5 does that.

I read the debates of last year on the floor of the Senate and in the House. There was a lot of talk about setting up ``embryo farms,'' that there is going to be embryo farming so that women will take their eggs, or create embryos, and there will be embryo farms. I heard that a number of times. Well, S. 5 prohibits women from being paid to donate their embryos. There is no chance under this bill that women could be exploited to go through the donation process against their will. Under our bill, couples cannot receive money or other inducements to donate embryos. Under the present guidelines that now exist from the White House, it just says you cannot receive money. Well, there might be other inducements that may be provided to you to get you to donate. We want to cut that off and say it has to be purely voluntary. So you cannot receive money or any other inducements; you must have written, informed consent; it can only come from embryos that would otherwise be discarded; and there are very strict ethical guidelines.

So, again, this year's bill, S. 5, has one significant change from last year's bill that we passed. We passed that overwhelmingly, with 63 votes. But this bill has one difference. It includes the text of last year's Specter-Santorum bill, which passed the Senate unanimously but got tied up in the House and died at the end of the 109th Congress. That bill, which President Bush strongly endorsed, encouraged NIH to pursue alternative ways of deriving stem cells, in addition to our current method.

As I have made clear, going back to December of 1998, I support any ethical means to improve the lives of human beings who are suffering. I believe we should open every door we can in the pursuit of cures. So what we have done in the new version of S. 5 is combine the two bills the Senate passed overwhelmingly last year but did not become law. That was H.R. 810 and the Specter-Santorum bill. By voting for S. 5, the bill before us now, Senators can show they support all forms of stem cell research. Again, the Specter-Santorum bill says open it up and find out all other forms of stem cell research. That was amniotic, placental stem cells, adult stem cells, whatever. I have no problem with that. I think we ought to pursue all of them. But that is the key difference between S. 5 and S. 30--that is the other bill we will vote on tomorrow night, S. 30. That bill puts all its hopes in theories, alternative ways of deriving stem cells that might or might not work. At this point, nobody knows. We do know how to derive embryonic stem cells and how to propagate them. Some research in other countries and private research has already led to stem cells developing into nerve cells and things like that.

We don't know about what S. 30 does. S. 30 says to scientists--that is the other bill before us--don't use any of the 400 existing stem cell lines already derived. Instead, put all of your effort into figuring out some new way of deriving stem cells that might take 10 or more years to pan out, or maybe not at all. For example, the proponents of S. 30 will talk a lot over today and tomorrow about stem cells that could allegedly be derived from ``dead embryos''--embryos that are not healthy and have stopped growing. I have to tell you, the idea that we can cure juvenile diabetes, ALS, and Parkinson's with something called ``dead embryos'' doesn't exactly inspire me with a lot of confidence. Think about it. If you were treating somebody with embryonic stem cells, would you rather use stem cells that came from an embryo that is healthy, vibrant, and growing or would you rather have them coming from a dead embryo? Ask yourself that simple question. The dead embryo died for a reason: there was something wrong with it. Chances are that the stem cells which come from that embryo are not so great, either. So why does anyone think a dead embryo holds the secret to curing ALS or juvenile diabetes? S. 5, our bill, by contrast, would immediately make those hundreds of new lines eligible for Federal research, again, as long as they were derived under the strict ethical guidelines we have in our bill. So S. 30, the other bill, might not do any harm, but I don't think it does any good, either. Again, that is why we ought to keep our focus on S. 5.

If this year's debate goes like last year's, then we will expect opponents of S. 5 to make a lot of unfounded claims about adult stem cells. I will listen closely and try to correct those mistakes people might make. There is a lot of stuff out there. Our committee looked at this, and we have had a lot of testimony from scientists at NIH. So there will be a lot of unfounded claims about adult stem cells.

As I have said for the last several years, I am all for adult stem cell research and use. Adult stem cells are already being used successfully in treating several blood-related diseases, and that is great. I am all for it. Let's continue this area of research. But as we now know, and as scientists tell us, adult stem cells have limits. They can't do everything that embryonic stem cells can do. Again, don't take my word for it. Listen to what Dr. Zerhouni, the Nation's highest ranking medical researcher, has to say about adult stem cells. This is what he said before our committee:

The presentations about adult stem cells having as much or

more potential than embryonic stem cells, in my view, do not

hold scientific water. . . . I think they are overstated. . .

. My point of view is that all angles in stem cell research

should be pursued.

That is what S. 5 will allow us to do. Most people could care less what cells are used to develop a cure. They just want a cure. So I say let's examine them all.

By the way, S. 30, the other bill we will be debating that focuses on deriving stem cells from naturally dead embryos, can be done under S. 5 also or under the Specter-Santorum bill. There are no restrictions on that issue. It is just that S. 30 says that is all we will do. S. 5, our bill, says we will open the 400 lines as long as they meet the ethical guidelines we have established. We will open those 400 lines to federally funded research and everything else, too. They can look at stem cells from naturally dead embryos. They can look at them from adult stem cells, placental, amniotic fluid, umbilical cord--whatever. They can look at them all as long as they meet ethical guidelines.

Lastly, we talk all about research, about science, about stem cells, using all the quotes from scientists and others. What it is really about is giving hope to people. It is about helping people who have devastating--devastating--illnesses.

This is a picture of Karli Borcherding of Ankeny, IA. Karli is one of the millions of Americans whose hopes depend on stem cell research. I met Karli for the first time last fall with her mother and her sisters. She just celebrated her 12th birthday. She has type 1 diabetes, also called juvenile diabetes. When people have this disease, their body stops making insulin, so they have to inject it either through needles or a pump.

Here is a picture of Karli Borcherding, age 12, from Ankeny, IA, with 1 month's worth of needles. Look at that picture. There are 120 needles, 1 month. Ask yourself: How would you like to give yourself four shots a day at age 12? Imagine that, four times a day. As Karli says, she never gets a vacation from juvenile diabetes. It is with her wherever she goes--at school, at

home, on field trips, on holidays. She told me:

My dream is that one day we will find a cure for juvenile

diabetes, and I can just go back to being just a normal kid.

If adult stem cells could bring Karli a cure, she would gladly take it. But scientists have known about adult stem cells for 40 years, and they still haven't provided the answer for juvenile diabetes. We can't keep telling people such as Karli that embryonic stem cells might bring them a cure but, sorry, the Federal Government is not interested. Our premier institution of NIH can't be involved.

We can't keep telling the millions of Americans who have Parkinson's, ALS, cancer, or spinal cord injuries: Sorry, we know that embryonic stem cell research might ease your suffering, but we would rather do nothing about it.

Now is our chance to change that situation. I urge Senators to think about Karli Borcherding and all the people in their lives who could benefit from stem cell research and vote yes emphatically on S. 5 tomorrow.

Mr. President, I yield the floor to my good friend, and I say again, the person who started all of our hearings on this issue in December of 1998. Under the chairmanship of Senator Specter, our subcommittee had the first hearing on stem cell research 1 month after they were derived. Under his chairmanship, we have had 20 hearings. I mentioned that earlier. There hasn't been a more stalwart, informed person in either body, or on the Hill, about embryonic stem cell research than Senator Specter.

Mr. President, how much time do we have remaining on our side?

Mr. President, we started a little late, so I will yield back the remainder of my time on this segment.

Iowa.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from California for the eloquent statement and for her many years of working on this issue and for her support on so many issues dealing with the health of the American people. I thank Senator Feinstein for being a stalwart in trying to break down the barriers we have to embryonic stem cell research.

I now yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Delaware, Mr. Carper.

Mr. President, I thank my good friend, the Senator from Delaware, for his very eloquent and personal statement. That is what this is all about, helping people who are suffering bad problems and need help with their health care.

I yield to a leader on all our health care issues for so many years, and I think he is recognized as such by the entire country. He is a great leader in all health care issues, especially on this issue of stem cell research. I yield to the Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Kennedy.

How much time remains, Mr. President?

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, how much time is remaining on our side in this round?

Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the distinguished Senator from Rhode Island.

Mr. President, I am glad to yield 10 minutes to the distinguished Senator from Maine.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Maine for her very eloquent statement regarding this bill. The Senator is right on the mark in talking about the ethical--if I can get her attention for a second--part of this issue.

As the Senator knows, in S. 5, we have very strict ethical guidelines. One, the only embryos that can be used are those slated to be discarded anyway from our IVF clinics. Secondly, there has to be written informed consent by the donors. And, third, there cannot be any monetary or other kinds of inducements at all to the donors of these embryos. Those guidelines are actually stricter than what is in law right now. As the Senator knows, we have these strict guidelines.

The other point the Senator brought up, if she has a minute for me to explore this point with her a bit, is that we have in vitro fertilization clinics. My information is that last year about 50,000 babies were born by IVF. I have friends of mine who had children thanks to IVF; otherwise, they would never have had children. Obviously, there are some embryos left over. They would like to be able to donate those for embryonic stem cell research because they are not going to have any more children.

So it seems to me the ethics question is, are we just going to discard them as hospital waste, which is done every day, or would it be more ethical to say let's use those with the strict guidelines we have to save lives, to make life better, to ease suffering and pain?

The Senator from Maine put her finger on it. That, to me, is the ethical way, I would think. What our bill is trying to do is to let those donors of those embryos say, yes, do this. You can do that, and use that for research. I thank the Senator from Maine for her contribution.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Maine. How much time does our side have remaining?

Mr. President, I will take a couple more minutes to expand on this point.

I mentioned this morning, if you are faced with a situation where embryos are going to be discarded and destroyed totally or these embryos could be donated for embryonic stem cell research and propagated and given life and then proceed to give life to others, is that not the better ethical choice? In other words, what I am saying is, when you discard an embryo from an IVF clinic now as hospital waste, that is destroyed. But if you take an embryo and take out of the embryo the 100 or 200 cells in it, extract them, the embryo itself is not an embryo any longer, but the cells are still alive. They are still alive. They propagate, they grow, they become stem cells that we already know--we have already done that--develop into nerve cells, bone cells, heart muscle tissue, motor neurons. They already know that.

On the one hand, you are really destroying the embryos, and on the other hand, you are taking the embryos, you are changing them into something else that propagates life and that actually could be--we don't know, as the Senator said, we don't know the end result but could actually enhance and make life better for many people. It seems to me this is the more ethical way to go.

Mr. President, I yield the remainder of the time to the Senator from Maryland.

Mr. President, do I understand the situation is that now our side has 60 minutes?

Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Florida.

Mr. President, I am waiting for the arrival of another Senator to speak.

I listened to some of the debate that was just concluded, and I thought I heard--I am almost certain I heard--the distinguished Senator from Oklahoma say S. 5 would provide money for the destruction of human embryos.

Well, I am sorry, I hate to disagree with my friend from Oklahoma, but that is not so. As a matter of fact, we do not provide that kind of Federal money now with the stem cell lines that are being researched-- the few that are being researched now--and we do not under our bill. We still operate under what is called the Dickey-Wicker amendment which prohibits the use of Federal funds being used to destroy embryos. So we do not do that anyway. I think the Senator from Oklahoma ought to read the bill a little bit more carefully and understand we do not provide for the destruction of embryos.

I always find curious, every time someone speaks for the President--a spokesperson for the President--they always say the one line the President will not cross is he will not provide taxpayer money for the destruction of embryos. Well, if that is the case, then he should have no problem with S. 5, the bill we have before us, because it does not provide Federal funding for the destruction of embryos. It provides Federal funding for the research on stem cell lines that are derived by others--private entities, State entities, or whatever. But we do not provide any funding for the destruction of embryos whatsoever. I wanted to clear that up to make certain that did not sit out there.

I also listened earlier to my good friend--and he is a good friend-- Senator Brownback talking about the 72 diseases being treated with adult stem cells. Well, if all of these diseases are being treated so well with adult stem cells, then why do all the patient advocacy groups that are affiliated with those diseases support our bill, S. 5? We have 525 different patient advocacy groups supporting our bill.

I wish to ask the Senator from Kansas, how many does he have supporting S. 30? Senator Brownback's list includes several types of leukemia and lymphoma, but I have a letter from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, by Mr. George Dahlman, the vice president for public policy. He wrote a letter dated April 4 of this year. He says:

On behalf of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, I am writing

in response to assertions that adult stem cells have treated

or cured several blood cancers, including several leukemias,

lymphomas and multiple myeloma.

As a representative of more than 700,000 patients and their

caregivers in this country who battle blood cancers on a

daily basis, our organizations would like to emphasize, as

the Senate debates S. 5, the Stem Cell Research and

Enhancement Act, that we exist today because we have not

found cures for these devastating diseases.

He says:

Furthermore, the claim that treatment of blood cancers with

cord blood, blood, or marrow stem cells demonstrates the

potential of ``adult stem cell'' research or is a substitute

for embryonic stem cell research is misleading and

disingenuous.

So again, Senator Brownback's list included leukemia and lymphoma, but the various organizations that represent all these people support S. 5. I ask unanimous consent that a copy of that letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I see my colleague, Senator Brown from Ohio, is here. I yield to him 10 minutes. If he needs more time, I can yield him more.

Mr. President, I wish to thank the Senator from Ohio for his eloquent statement. This is what it is all about. He got it right when he said this is about hope. It is not hope based upon any kind of false foundation. All the leading scientists, Nobel Prize winners, heads and former heads of NIH, and 525 different advocacy groups, all relying upon good scientific expertise, have said the foundation here is solid, that we can build hope because we know embryonic stem cells develop into all the cells of the human body. We know. We have had embryonic stem cells that have differentiated into nerve tissue, more neurons, heart and muscle tissue, and bones. So we know the possibility is there because it has already been done.

Again, we have a long way to go. No one is saying that absolutely we will do this, this, and this, but that is what scientific research is about. It is about looking and studying and examining and trying to develop these ideas. We know the foundation is there. So the hope we hold out to people with Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, ALS, and spinal cord injury is one that is real, but it will not happen unless we get about embryonic stem cell research and lift the handcuffs, the shackles off our scientists.

So the Senator from Ohio is right. It is about hope. That is what this bill is all about. It is about hope. Not the false hope of saying: Oh, adult stem cells will take care of it. Adult stem cells have their place, and some of them have proven adequate to do different things but not everything. There is hope with amniotic fluid stem cells, cord blood stem cells. Now, the bill S. 30 talks about that, which is taking it from naturally dead embryos. That raises ethical questions in and of itself. Who decides when something is naturally dead? I would ask my colleagues who are promoting S. 30--and they are my good friends; I know they mean well and they are trying to advance a certain point of view, but are they saying you can take something that is dead and bring it back to life? If so, that is--I have only known where that has happened once in the history of humankind, and we just celebrated Easter Sunday. So they can't be saying they are taking something dead and bringing it back to life. So if it is not dead, what is it? Is it a sick embryo? Is it an embryo that isn't quite propagating as fast? What is it and who decides? Who gets to decide? S. 30 doesn't say that. S. 30 has no ethical guidelines to decide, or who decides what is naturally dead. So that raises all kinds of ethical questions in and of itself. So that is why, even if S. 30 were to become law--I don't think it will be--I don't mind supporting S. 30. The fact is our bill, S. 5, does everything S. 30 wants to do. If they want to do research to take embryonic stem cells from blastocysts that are not developing correctly, that can happen under our bill. Our bill opens the door to all kinds of research.

Here is the difference between S. 5 and S. 30. S. 5, the bill we are supporting, does both things. It opens the door for embryonic stem cell research

from leftover embryos from in vitro fertilization clinics, under strict ethical guidelines which I talked about today and laid out. It also would provide for research into naturally dead embryos. Now, S. 30, their bill, the Isakson-Coleman bill, it does one of those. It does research only into stem cells from naturally dead embryos. That is the difference. Our bill allows that to go ahead. Their bill does not allow the more promising embryonic stem cell research to go ahead, and that is from leftover embryos at in vitro fertilization clinics. That is what this is all about. That is what this is all about.

Again, I repeat: It is about what the Senator from Ohio said. It is about hope. Listen, we are not fooling anybody around here, the people watching, the medical community out there, the research scientists, the families of loved ones who are suffering from these illnesses, the kids with juvenile diabetes, they get it. They get it. They know what that is all about. They know there is only one bill on the floor of the Senate now that gives them hope, and that is S. 5. They know it. All this mumbo jumbo we hear, it doesn't mean anything. Only one thing means anything, and that is to pass the bill that takes the shackles off our scientists, that provides for strict ethical guidelines for people who have leftover embryos at an in vitro fertilization clinic who say: I don't want them discarded as hospital waste. I want them to be donated to science to cure diseases and illnesses and to help suffering people.

That is what S. 5 is about. S. 30 does not do that. It simply keeps the handcuffs on our scientists, and we want to remove those handcuffs.

Mr. President, I see my good friend from New Jersey is on the floor, so I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from New Jersey.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from New Jersey for a very eloquent and poignant presentation of his position on embryonic stem cell research. I think what the Senator reflected is, again, the hopes of so many families in America who have a loved one suffering from Alzheimer's or juvenile diabetes, or a young person who has had an accident and is a paraplegic for life with a spinal cord injury. You say: What can we do to help? How can we help? Well, it is one thing to be sympathetic--and we are sympathetic to those who suffer from illnesses or injuries--but if we have it within our grasp, as the Senator from New Jersey said, to open some doors and see what is behind those doors, it seems to me we are compelled to do that.

We don't know where the scientific research may lead. But we do know if we don't do it, it is not going to lead anywhere. We know that. As I said earlier, the foundations are there to give hope to people that embryonic stem cell research will lead to great discoveries and treatments and interventions. I can only say to my friend from New Jersey that, in all of my meetings with scientists over the last dozen years or more--and especially since Gerhardt and Thompson isolated stem cells in 1998--the scientific community's enthusiasm for this is almost boundless because they realize that harnessing the power of embryonic stem cells that can develop into any form of a cell in the body could lead to interventions and cures that are now beyond our grasp.

I listened to the Senator from New Jersey, especially when he talked about opening doors. I have often likened biomedical research, scientific research, to saying if there are 10 doors, and you don't know what is behind any of those doors, if you are only going to open one door, what are your odds of finding the right answer? Well, if you open two doors, the odds get better. If you open five doors, you know it is 50-50. So the more doors we open, the better our chances are of finding these discoveries.

The Senator is right. If we open one door at a time, the odds are always going to be 10 to 1--or I guess it would be 9 to 1. It would be 9 to 1 that you are not going to find the right answer.

If we start opening all these doors and get the scientists talking with one another and looking at things, well, that means the span of time that it would take to find these cures is collapsed.

Scientists don't work in a vacuum. They collaborate. They talk with one another. They read one another's papers. They find out what other scientists are doing. They find out if a scientist has opened a different door and collaborate on that. That is why it is necessary to begin to open these doors.

I thank the Senator from New Jersey for talking about that point.

Earlier I was responding to the comments of my friend from Kansas, Senator Brownback. He was talking about 72 diseases being treated with adult stem cells. I pointed out his list included several types of leukemia and lymphomas, but I had printed in the Record earlier a letter from George Dahlman of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society saying they support S. 5.

Senator Brownback's list also included testicular cancer. I have a letter from Craig Nichols, M.D., board member of the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Here is what he says:

As a member of the Lance Armstrong Foundation Board of

Directors, I am writing in response to assertions that adult

stem cells have treated or cured the disease of testicular

cancer. . . . I feel it is important to set the record

straight on this issue. . . .

There is not an FDA-approved adult stem cell treatment

generally available to treat testicular cancer. Rather, adult

stem cells enable testicular cancer patients to withstand a

higher dose of chemotherapy during treatment for the disease.

We support exploring every avenue of research, including

embryonic stem cell research within specified ethical limits,

until a cure is found.

The Lance Armstrong Foundation asks that you and your

colleagues pass S. 5, and not accept any substitutes.

I ask unanimous consent that a copy of this letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, Senator Brownback's list of 72 diseases includes Parkinson's disease. I have a letter

from six Parkinson's groups: The American Parkinson's Disease Association, the Parkinson's Action Network, the Michael J. Fox Parkinson's Research Foundation, the National Parkinson Foundation, the Parkinson's Disease Foundation, and the Parkinson's Alliance & Unity Walk.

Here is what they say:

Opponents of S. 5 are using as ammunition the assertion

that embryonic stem cell research is not needed in this

country because many diseases, 72 of them, including

Parkinson's, have been treated or cured with adult stem

cells. This assertion is an absolute falsehood. If there were

a therapy to adequately treat the symptoms or halt the

progression of this unrelenting disease, the millions of

Parkinson's patients, caregivers and their physicians would

be pursuing that treatment right now. . . .

The Parkinson's community asks that you and your colleagues

pass S. 5 and not accept any substitutes.

I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, Senator Brownback's list includes multiple sclerosis. Here is a letter from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society:

S. 5 is the only bill that is pro-patient, pro-cure, and

pro-research. Please work to pass S. 5 immediately. Thank you

for bringing this important vote to the Senate floor.

Joyce Nelson, President and CEO of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, Senator Brownback's list also included spinal cord injury. Here is a letter from the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation:

While there are indeed a number of promising avenues now

being investigated that address paralysis and spinal cord

injuries through rehabilitation, cellular therapies and

pharmaceuticals, there simply is no merit to any claim that

adult stem cells have successfully treated or cured spinal

cord injuries. . . .

The Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation strongly endorses

the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, S. 5, and thanks you

for your leadership in bringing this vital legislation to the

Senate floor.

Signed by Peter Wilderotter, President.

I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, again, Senator Brownback's list includes several blood conditions. Here is a letter from the American Society of Hematology:

ASH supports S. 5 because our members are interested in

expanding the current federal policy on embryonic stem cell

research to allow scientists to explore the full promise of

this field. The other bill that will be considered by the

Senate will not change current policy in any meaningful way.

. . .

Again, our Society urges your support of S. 5. . . .

I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, a report in Science magazine analyzes the list to which Senator Brownback referred. The authors found there are FDA-approved treatments for only nine diseases on Senator Brownback's list and all of those are blood-related diseases such as leukemia.

I ask unanimous consent that this article in Science be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I see that my friend from New Jersey is also in the Chamber. He has been a strong supporter of medical research through all his lifetime. I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from New Jersey. I assure him that if he needs more time, we will yield him some more time. I yield to the distinguished Senator, my good friend, Mr. Lautenberg.

How much time remains on our side, Mr. President?

Mr. President, I obviously yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, how much time do we have on our side?

Mr. President, I will take about 10 minutes or so, I suppose--maybe 15 at the most. Then I will yield back the remainder of my time for anyone who is interested in what is happening on the floor. I think Senator Isakson will follow up and close off the debate for the remainder of today.

But I want to respond to a couple things that have been said that I was listening to both on the floor and off the floor so people understand that sometimes things are not as clear cut as perhaps they are presented. There are always two sides to every story, as we know.

But I heard my good friend from Kansas talking about the type 1 diabetes research that was conducted in Brazil. Indeed, the JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, reported today they had some success with this. I just want to read, though, from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation that obviously has been following this issue very closely. They said that today's report underscores the need for continued work across a range of important scientific areas. They said:

For that reason, we continue to strongly support passage of

S. 5, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, which will

allow scientists to more fully explore this critical area of

research.

I will not go into all of the things they are saying about the procedure. It is a risky procedure that happened in Brazil. They do not know at this point whether the people are really cured. Will their symptoms--diabetes symptoms--come back after a few months? No one really knows. But it is promising. Again, I am hopeful that research pans out. But I want to point out, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation says that is fine, but still, let's get S. 5 passed so we can continue on with this needed research in embryonic stem cells.

I also want to talk for a little bit about two or three issues. One is just the broader issue of why embryonic stem cell research has not yet led to human treatments. Well, scientists have been doing research on adult stem cells for over 30 years. There are no--I repeat, no-- arbitrary restrictions on research with adult stem cells. Scientists and private companies do not have to be skittish about doing this research. They do not have to worry about that all of a sudden the Federal Government is going to ban it or limit it.

Now, compare that situation with embryonic stem cells. First of all, scientists did not even know how to extract them until November of 1998. The first Federal grant for these stem cells was not awarded until 2002, and again on a limited number of lines that are available. Even now only a tiny fraction of the total Federal budget for stem cell research is used for embryonic stem cells. The vast majority still goes for adult stem cells.

Here is a chart I have in the Chamber that shows that. Embryonic research lags far behind adult stem cells. For fiscal year 2006, the National Institutes of Health funding for embryonic stem cells, $38.3 million; for adult stem cells, $200.3 million. So, again, people say: Well, why isn't embryonic stem cells doing more? You can see it is being totally underfunded as compared with adult stem cells.

Again, we have not had the 30 years of research. There has been more than five times as much funding for adult stem cell research as for embryonic stem cells. So, again, scientists are studying embryonic stem cells with one arm tied behind their back.

The fact is, it does not matter what many of the Senators think about the potential of embryonic stem cell research. What matters is what scientists think. What is their view, those who know this area, who are studying it, Nobel prize laureates, the head of NIH? Let's look at what the head of NIH--this is a man appointed by President Bush. He heads, as Senator Specter has often said, the crown jewel of the Federal Government; that is, the National Institute of Health. Here is what he said:

The presentations about adult stem cells having as much or

more potential than embryonic stem cells, in my view, do not

hold scientific water. . . .I think they are overstated. . .

.My point of view is that all angles in stem cell research

should be pursued.

That was Dr. Elias Zerhouni, the head of NIH.

Breakthroughs are coming, but they take time. To clamp down on embryonic stem cell research before it even has a chance shows a total lack of understanding about how science works. More importantly, it denies hope to the millions of Americans who suffer from Parkinson's, ALS, juvenile diabetes, spinal cord injuries, and other treatable diseases and conditions.

Secondly, I want to respond to an issue that is presented in the Isakson-Coleman bill, S. 30--this whole idea of the promise of extracting embryonic stem cells from dead embryos. I must say--and I say to my good friend from Georgia--this still kind of mystifies me. As I said earlier, when something is dead, it is dead. I do not know anybody who can extract and bring back to life something that is dead. So we have to get over the idea we are talking about dead embryos. They are not dead; they are alive. They are living. They are living organisms. They are not dead. So again, an embryo dies or gets sick or ill for a reason. There is something wrong with it. Chances are the stem cells that come from that ``dead embryo'' aren't so great either. So why does anyone think a dead embryo holds the secret to, say, curing juvenile diabetes?

Here is what three top scientists wrote about dead embryos:

There is no proof that dead embryos will work. Beyond the

fact that scientists haven't developed a reliable method for

determining an embryo's ``death,'' there is no scientific

evidence that stem cells derived from these embryos would

have the required properties or be safe for human therapies.

Paul Berg of Stanford, George Daley of Harvard, and Lawrence S. B. Goldstein of the University of California at San Diego, these three people have been involved in embryonic stem cell extraction research. They say there is no evidence this will have the required properties or be safe for human therapies.

I want to read from the bill, S. 30. This is the definition of naturally dead:

The term ``naturally dead'' means having naturally and

irreversibly lost the capacity for integrated cellular

division, growth, and differentiation that is characteristic

of an organism, even if some cells of the former organism may

be alive in a disorganized state.

Well, I have a hard time understanding that, but then this is not a scientific definition. I submit there is no scientific test to determine when an embryo reaches this state where they can say it won't differentiate or grow. It is an eyeball test. I have been told when people get in vitro fertilization and they produce embryos, the embryologist, if I can use that term, will look at them and some exhibit better signs than others. Some look healthier than others, have more activity than others. These are the ones they will implant. The other ones that look healthy, they freeze. If there are some that don't look very healthy, they are discarded.

I assume these are the ones we are talking about in S. 30; is that right?

No, no. I would ask my friend as we engage in this--and I have obviously been talking to scientists and others about this--we get into another problem, and I will read something from a scientist who wrote me a letter on this. Who decides? Who decides when that embryo is not implantable? How is that decided? I am told there is no scientific dividing line on that. It is sort of an eyeball test. One scientist might say no, another scientist may say yes. Your bill, with all due respect, does not give any clear delineation.

Mr. President, I ask my friend for further clarification. Is it not true that some of these after 7 days could be implantable?

Let me read, though, from a letter from George Daley, who is one of the foremost researchers on embryonic stem cell research at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute at the Harvard Medical School. Mr. Daley has testified, and I think he testified that day we were there. I wrote him a letter asking him about his views on using embryonic stem cells that have been called ``naturally dead.'' He said:

Though some Senators might be persuaded to vote for

expanded funding for human embryonic stem cells derived from

``naturally dead'' stem cells, this would be a step backwards

for embryonic stem cell research. The definition of a

``naturally dead'' embryo as required in the alternative bill

is highly problematic. S. 5 remains the greatest hope for

advancing embryonic stem cell research in this country. The

concept that human embryonic stem cells might be derived from

a ``naturally dead'' embryo originated in an article authored

by Landry and Zucker in the Journal of Clinical Investigation

2004. The article contained the following passage:

``For a developed human organism, brain death marks the

irreversible loss of the capacity for all ongoing and

integrated organic function . . .''

As we just mentioned.

We propose--

Get this:

We propose that the defining capacity of a 4 or 8 cell

human embryo is continued and integrated cellular division,

growth, and differentiation. We further propose that an

embryo that has irreversibly lost its capacity, even as its

individual cells are alive, is properly considered

organismically dead. Even at its earliest stages, the life of

the developing organism is more than the sum of the lives of

its constituent cells.

So again, they propose this. It is not an accepted scientific principle. The cessation of brain waves is, on the living organism, an accepted scientific fact, but this is only a proposal.

Mr. President, this is a good discussion.

I ask unanimous consent that this letter from Dr. George Daley be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, he pointed out in this letter that sometimes in actual clinical practice even poor quality embryos that might be considered naturally dead can, by in vitro fertilization, give rise to successful pregnancies. He says he also ``cannot envision an ethically acceptable clinical study that would correlate the pregnancy outcomes of enough poor quality embryos to ensure the reliability of criteria for `embryo death.'''

He is saying that the quality for in vitro may be different for in utero. Therefore, it might be a poor quality in vitro, but that doesn't necessarily mean it would be poor quality for implantation in utero. He raises this ethical question.

He says:

I am skeptical that we can devise any highly reliable

criteria to define embryo death that will appease the critics

of embryonic stem cell derivation.

What you are talking about is the Gardner principle, which has to do with what embryos they implant. That is what that really has to do with. So therefore, sure, you are going to take the healthiest, most vibrant embryo that you are going to implant, first of all, with the hope that it will develop. I still say to my friend that while you can take the ones that don't develop after a week or so and say we will take the stem cells from them--and some happen that way. That is fine. But it just sort of begs the question, if you really want to derive the best stem cells, why wouldn't you use the healthiest embryos rather than the sickest embryos? I am not a scientist, but to me it seems that if you want the best, most vibrant and healthy stem cells, you go after the most vibrant and healthy embryos that have been frozen in vitro fertilization, as our bill says, that otherwise will be discarded. That is my point.

I will soon yield. But I am not opposed to the Senator's bill. I am not opposed to looking at this kind of stem cell derivation. I don't have a problem. I think there are problems defining exactly when it dies and that kind of stuff. But if you pass S. 5, that takes care of all that, and it covers that whole issue. It would seem to me, again, that you would want to go after the healthiest and use the healthiest ones.

That is true.

Right.

Again, it is a good debate. We should have more of these kinds of exchanges on the Senate floor. I respect my friend, and I respect his approach. Again, we have our differences in the way we approach things. I picked up on one word my friend just said--the ``environment'' in which we are operating. I assume he means the environment being the Presidential declaration of August 9, 2001, that only Federal funding could be used for stem cells derived prior to 9 p.m. but none after that. I assume that is the environment we are talking about.

That is what I thought. My proposal is to change the environment. That is what we have to do. I say we have to change the environment. The American people want it changed, the scientific community wants it changed, the head of NIH--former head of NIH and 525 different advocacy groups out there want it changed. Why should one person--the President of the United States--have the say-so of what is moral and what is not moral, depending upon a time?

Sure, but why is 9 p.m. of August 9 the moral dividing line that Federal funds can be used on stem cell lines? Before that it is moral, but after that it is immoral. I cannot understand that.

I appreciate that. We have to do what we can do sometimes here. Certainly, we have been funding adult stem cell research. Senator Specter and I have made certain of that in our Appropriations Committee.

Don't get me started on that because those have all been contaminated on mouse feeder cells. My friend from Oklahoma said that was not true the other day, but it is true. They have been growing on mouse feeder cells, every one of them. Again, we don't know if they will ever be able to be used for any kind of human therapies. Maybe yes, maybe no. We do know that the 400-some stem cell lines derived since then privately, or by State involvement, or whatever, have not been used on mouse feeder cells. We know those, more than likely, will have the capacity of being used in human therapy.

I respect people's morality, but I just don't know that I like it when somebody imposes their self-imposed morality on all of the American people. I respect the President's moral views, I really do. But I have a hard time understanding how the President can say Federal funding should not be used for embryonic stem cell research if they were derived after 9 p.m., August 9, 2001, and before that it is morally OK. For the life of me, I have never been able to understand that.

If it is morally unacceptable to use Federal dollars for embryonic stem cell research, then it ought not to be used for these 21 lines either.

Quite frankly, that is why I don't have any problems with this line of research. All I can say to my friend is that all of the scientists who write me letters and who have weighed in on this issue, and the groups that rely upon scientists and Nobel laureates, they all say that this might be an area of interest, but it doesn't substitute for lifting the ban. I am hopeful. I guess I am a hopeful person.

I am hopeful that the President will understand that we are not asking him to cross his moral line. He said repeatedly through his spokespeople, very recently, that the one bright line the President will not cross is using Federal funds to destroy embryos. I wish they would read the bill. S. 5 doesn't provide money for the destruction of embryos. We don't do that now. We have not done it in the past. So, therefore, this bill should be able to be signed because it doesn't provide one single cent of taxpayer dollars for the destruction of embryos. Of course, neither does the bill of the Senator from Georgia; of course not. So that is why I am a hopeful person, thinking that the President or his people will read this and say: You are right. We have stricter ethical guidelines in this bill than exist right now.

So I am hopeful. I am hopeful that we can get this job done.

Anyway, I just wanted to make one other point tonight before I yield the floor.

I wish we could do more of this on the Senate floor. By having respect for one another's opinions and thought processes and sources of information, I think we can get a clearer understanding of where people are coming from. Lots of times we give our speech and leave and nobody is around discussing anything.

Some of the best times I have had on the Senate floor were debating Phil Gramm of Texas. We used to get into some good debates. He was always willing to give and take and talk back and forth in a congenial manner. We need more of that on the floor of the Senate. That is just my opinion.

Mr. President, I want to say one other thing that came up. Again, it has to do with understanding these kinds of moral lines, so to speak. It is true that we all started out as an embryo. I want to remind people what an embryo is. It is a blastocyst that has between 100 and 200 cells. The embryos we are talking about in S. 5 are sitting in in

vitro fertilization clinics and are frozen in liquid nitrogen. They are smaller than a period at the end of a sentence, and they are stored in tiny straws like this.

What I am holding up here is one of the devices used to store embryonic stem cells in liquid nitrogen. They take this top off here, if I can get it off. They have a little tube like this. In this tube, the opening of which is about as big as the end of a period at the end of a sentence, they would put in that little tube an embryo. Then they would put it in this enclosure and put it in liquid nitrogen in a tank and freeze it. Then if the couple who donated the embryos were unsuccessful in having children--I have a couple friends of mine who are now doing that, and their first pregnancy wasn't successful. They were going back for a second. They get one of these frozen embryos, thaw it out, and it is implanted in utero. So that is what these tiny little straws are.

An embryo will never become a human being unless and until it is implanted into a uterus, takes hold, and develops. Sometimes they are implanted and they don't take hold; they are discharged.

So an embryo is what I think we can rightfully call potential life-- potential in that if it is implanted and takes hold, it could become a human being. Therefore, it is potential.

Let's look at another chart.

This is Karli Borcherding of Ankeny, IA. She is 12 years old and has type 1 diabetes. These are all the needles she uses in 1 month, 120. Think: How would you like to give yourself four shots every day? Look at all those needles she goes through every month at 12 years of age. Karli has juvenile diabetes, as I said. She knows what will happen if she is not cured. At some point in her life, she will probably become blind. She will probably lose a foot, a leg, or one or more of her limbs. At some point in her life, diabetes will take her.

This is not potential life. This is real life--a human being living right now.

That embryo stored in liquid nitrogen, is it alive? Of course. It is not dead, it is alive. Is it a human being? No. It is a potential human being. Karli Borcherding is a real human being.

So read S. 5. Under the ethical guidelines of this bill, NIH can fund research only on those embryos which are left over from in vitro fertilization and which would otherwise be discarded. Every day, fertility clinics discard unwanted embryos. Last year, 50,000 babies were born to couples who wanted to have a baby, couldn't, and wanted in vitro fertilization. Out of those 50,000, a lot of embryos are left over. When a couple has had one child, two, three--however many they decide--and they have leftover embryos, what happens to them? The clinic calls them up and says: If you want to keep them, you have to pay us every month. Parents may say: We don't want them anymore, we have had all our children. And if you are not willing to pay to keep them frozen for the next 200, 300, 400, 500, 1,000 years or however long, they are discarded. It happens every day of every week of every year.

What we are saying and what the real question is, as long as we have leftover embryos, is it better to have them discarded and flushed down the drain or used for the kind of scientific research that would one day cure Karli Borcherding?

What we are talking about is potential life, potential life frozen in nitrogen, or we are talking about real life. That is really the difference--potential life that would otherwise be flushed down the drain versus Karli Borcherding and her real life. That is why I think Senator Hatch had it correct. He said the real pro-life position is S. 5. That is the real pro-life position.

As I have said before, once an embryo is discarded in an in vitro fertilization clinic, it is discarded. It is dead. But if that embryo was taken and the stem cells are taken out and those stem cells are propagated, they are alive. They don't die; they are alive. They continue to be alive. They are developed into nerve tissue, bone tissue, heart muscle tissue that some day--or they could be developed into the kinds of cells that would help Karli Borcherding become insulin free. That is what this debate is about.

It seems to me, if this is a moral problem for the President or anybody else, we ought to have legislation that would shut down every IVF clinic in this country. Shut them down and ban the procedure in the United States because there are leftover embryos. If it is immoral to take those embryos, even with the written, informed consent of the donors, with no money changing hands, and if they are going to be discarded anyway, if that is immoral, wouldn't it be immoral to just discard them? But you have to do one or the other.

Senator Brownback talked about adoption. I am all for that. That is fine. If couples want to adopt babies from in vitro fertilization clinics, that is fine. But as I said, we have 400,000 frozen embryos right now; 50,000 babies born every year from IVF. I think we have had, what, 135 adoptions. That is fine. They can be adopted, and there may be a lot of donors who have donated embryos. They have had their children, but they really don't want to have other people having their children. That raises other kinds of ethical questions. They might want to say: We would rather donate that for stem cell research to save Karli Borcherding's life.

We have to come to grips with this issue. Is it OK to have IVF clinics, is it OK to have in vitro fertilization? If that is the case, then we have to take it step by step and confront reality. The reality is in vitro fertilization is legal, it is acceptable. It provides couples with children they otherwise could not have, and the reality is that there are leftover embryos. We have to confront that reality. What do you do with them? They are not all going to be adopted. We have to agree that is an impossibility. So are they going to be discarded or with the consent of the donors be used for embryonic stem cell research? That is really the question.

I think there is really only one answer, and that is what all the scientists--I say all, the vast majority of scientists, Nobel laureates, the head of NIH, the former head of NIH, 525 advocacy groups representing all diseases and injuries in the United States that you can imagine, why they all say that S. 5 is the bill we have to pass, that we have to enact into law to take the handcuffs off our scientists. That is why it is so important we have a good solid vote for this bill tomorrow.

With that, I thank my colleague from Georgia for his patience and his kindness.

I yield back whatever time we have remaining on our side for today's purpose.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate resumes consideration of the stem cell bills on Wednesday following the opening of the Senate, there be 6\1/2\ hours remaining for debate, with the time controlled 1\1/2\ hours each: majority and Republican leaders or their designees, Senators Harkin and Brownback; with the time until 12:30 divided as follows: 90 minutes under the control of Senator Harkin or his designee and 45 minutes each for Senators Coleman, Isakson, and Brownback; that at 12:30 p.m., the Senate stand in recess until 2:15 p.m. for the weekly party conference work periods; that at 2:15 p.m., the time until 5:15 p.m. be allocated in the same manner, with the final 30 minutes equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the majority leader controlling the final 15 minutes; that at 5:45 p.m., without further intervening action or debate, the Senate proceed to vote on passage of S. 5, to be followed by a vote on the passage of S. 30; that there be 2 minutes of debate prior to the second vote with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees; that the other provisions of the order governing the consideration of these bills remain in effect.

Mr. President, we are going to reverse the order for a second.

Mr. President, I wish to commend the distinguished Senators from Iowa and Pennsylvania on their passion for stem cell research, which is shared by virtually all the people whom I know.

I also wish to ask unanimous consent that Senators Chambliss, Cornyn, and Burr be added as cosponsors of S. 30.

Mr. President, at the outset of my remarks I thank Tyler Thompson and Brittany Espy for the 2 years she devoted to this issue prior to Tyler taking over and Joan Kirchner and Chris Carr of my staff for their invaluable work and an intern and distinguished scholar from the University of Georgia named Nick Chammoun who introduced me to a man for whom I have the greatest admiration, Dr. Steven Stice, an eminent scholar and eminent stem cell researcher at the University of Georgia.

I have introduced, in concert with Senator Coleman, S. 30, which has been referred to by the Senator from Ohio as containing theories--and I know he is getting ready to leave, but I want him to hear one part before he leaves.

The Senator from Iowa, I sincerely apologize. His man just won the Masters in Augusta. I should remember that.

This bill is not about a theory when it comes to naturally dead embryos. Five of the existing 21 lines funded by NIH, grandfathered under the President's directive in August 2001, were derived, and are active today, from naturally dead embryos. So we are not talking about a theory, we are not talking about hope, and we are not talking about speculation. We are talking about a way to address the concern of the ethics of destruction of viable embryos with the promises and the hope of embryonic stem cell research.

Now, I was a real estate broker before I was elected to Congress, and since I have been in Congress, I have been anything but a scientist or anyone knowledgeable of medicine, but I care deeply and compassionately about those who suffer, and I share the concerns of not the question of ``when'' but

the question of ``if'' that was expressed by Senator Specter. So I began researching this entire issue to see if there wasn't a way, and that is when I stumbled onto the fact that there were already ways that embryonic stem cells were being derived without the destruction of viable embryos.

I went to the University of Georgia and I met Dr. Stice for the first time and he walked me through that process. For the edification of all those here, as well as those who are concerned about that issue, I wish to talk about it for a second because it is clear and it is precise and it threads the ethical needle and addresses the concern for the furtherance of scientific research.

In the process of in vitro fertilization, there are three principles, known as the Gardner principles, by which physicians and doctors grade embryonic byproducts of the fertilization to determine the embryos that are implantable, the embryos that are freezable, and the embryos that are clinically or naturally dead.

Level I embryos, after in vitro fertilization, are created within the first 3 days. They are viable embryos with a cluster of eight cells ready for implantation and can develop into a human being. After 4 additional days, additional embryos develop that contain the essential eight cells, and they are viable for freezing or for implantation. But after 7 days, the natural process of the cells dividing no longer takes place, and there are level III Gardner principle materials that are left that contain embryonic stem cells but cannot be implanted and cannot become a human being. Five of those lines were in existence in 2001 and were invested in by NIH and are active today.

So it is absolutely possible for further embryonic stem cell research to take place today without destroying a viable embryo and to have a plethora of available stem cells for researchers and for scientists. That, by the way, has been certified by any number of learned doctors and physicians and researchers and I wish to share some of those quotes at this time.

There was an article written, ``A Comparison of National Institute of Health-Approved Human Embryonic Stem Cell Lines,'' by Carol Ware, Angelique Nelson, and Anthony Blau. In that, they compared 15 of the 22 lines that at the time were active under the August 2001 Presidential executive directive, and I quote:

They compare stem cell markers, and growth characteristics

of and ease of genetic manipulation of all lines. Only 10 of

the lines were easily tested and our 3 lines again were one

of those 10 lines derived from naturally dead embryos. None

of the 10 lines were statistically different in any way when

7 different growth and characteristics experiments were

conducted. The take home message is that there is no

difference between our 3 lines, the 3 lines derived from

naturally dead embryos, and the other 7 lines which were

derived from donated embryos.

So there you have it clearly and precisely stated that we have active embryonic stem cell lines under research and funded by the NIH derived from a naturally dead embryo that did not involve the destruction of a viable embryo.

With the passage of S. 30, you immediately have the opportunity, and NIH is directed, to develop those guidelines for the furtherance of additional embryonic stem cell research on stem cells derived from those lines.

Now, there are a number of other distinguished and learned people who have written extensively about these lines and their viability, among them Sandii Brimble and Yongquan Luo. Mr. Luo is at the Laboratory of Neuroscience, National Institute of Aging, Department of Health and Human Services, in Baltimore, MD, who wrote:

Lines BG01, BG02, and BG03, which are the three lines NIH

currently is investing in that were derived from naturally

dead embryos, are therefore independent, undifferentiated,

and pluripotent lines that can be maintained without

accumulation of karyotypic abnormalities.

It took me a long time to practice saying those last two words, but I finally got through it. The point being that they are equally as viable as pluripotent and as rich for scientific research as those cells that would have been derived from a destroyed embryo.

In addition, I wish to quote from an article called Embryonic Death and the Creation of Human Embryonic Stem Cells, written by Dr. Donald W. Landry and Howard A. Zucker of Columbia University. I read as follows:

We propose herein a paradigm for research involving embryos

that protects human life, is consistent with Federal policy,

and yet advances the interests of biomedical science and

therapeutic innovation.

That is precisely quoting the definition of natural death for embryos as the threshold for which that should go forward.

In terms of making ``naturally dead'' a term that is understandable, this bill defines ``natural death'' in regard to embryos as the same acceptable way that death is defined in all 50 States of the United States of America. In my 30 years of public life, I have been through a number of ethical debates--the ``living will'' debates of the 1970s and the ``durable power of attorney,'' where we tried to legislate how you, Mr. President, or I could give an advanced directive of what a doctor could or could not do to me when I came to be in an incapacitated state, and we finally decided that an irreversible cessation of brain waves would be a clinical definition upon which that threshold can take place.

A ``naturally dead'' embryo is an embryo that, after the seventh day, has a cessation of the division of cells. It no longer can be implanted and become an embryo, but the cells that remain are viable, just as my heart, liver, kidneys, or lungs remain alive while I have an irreversible cessation of brain waves. It is that precedent which established all the organ transplants we do in America today--the gift of life that is given after the loss of life and the irreversible cessation of brain waves. This is, clinically, as Dr. Landry and Dr. Zucker have said, precisely the exact way to deal with the ethics and the morality of embryonic stem cell research because it is the same thing for that embryo that cannot become a human being to donate cells to become pluripotent embryonic stem cells as it is for a predirective to determine that organs can be transplanted from someone who has suffered an irreversible cessation of brain waves. It is scientific. It is ethical. And it is precise.

I submit the President of the United States has said he would-- actually did last year--veto a bill similar to the one introduced by Senator Harkin. The President said he will veto it again. Senator Specter, in his compassionate remarks and passionate remarks, acknowledged that the number of votes necessary to override a veto did not exist in the U.S. House of Representatives.

If, in fact, it is a matter of not if but when, with the adoption of S. 30, we can make the when now. We can see to it that the promise of embryonic stem cell research goes forward and the ethical lines that cause the dilemma that exists today in the United States of America are not crossed.

There is a human face on the desire to further that research. It is the face like that of a friend of mine, like former Senator Kip Klein, who suffers from Parkinson's and who has been an inspiration to me to find methods like this; and Cindy Donald, a beautiful lady who tragically was injured in an automobile accident and lost her ability to walk. There is hope and promise in centers such as the Shepherd Spinal Center in Atlanta which deals with those terrible injuries to the spinal cord. There is the hope to see to it that those who suffer from diabetes and juvenile diabetes can, in fact, find a cure that is possible and within our reach.

To that end, at the University of Georgia today, which I have already referred to a number of times, that research on embryonic stem cell research for the curing of diabetes is taking place. It is taking place in a laboratory and under the direction of eminent scholars, one of whom is Dr. Steven Stice, one of America's leading scholars today and one of the embryonic researchers who himself introduced to me this method, given his recognition of the ethical considerations and his desire and hope to bring promise and hope to the future of those who suffer.

I submit that the Coleman-Isakson bill, S. 30, is a road for us to walk proudly down, that enhances and advances, immediately, research into embryonic stem cell cures while at the same time respecting the ethical, scientific, and moral concerns that exist in the medical community today. It is not always possible in the body politic for solutions to be win-win, but I submit that S. 30, the Coleman-Isakson

bill, is a win-win. It is a win for hope, it is a win for research, and it is a win for promise.

I am pleased to yield to the distinguished Senator from Minnesota, Mr. Norm Coleman.

Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. President, I am going to yield to Senator Coleman. But, first, I ask unanimous consent that Senator McConnell be added as a cosponsor to S. 30.

Mr. President, I wish to associate myself with the remarks of many of the speeches that have been made this afternoon, particularly when Senator Collins of Maine a little while ago talked about whether we should decide--``we'' meaning Members of the Senate-- what the promise of embryonic stem cell research is. We can't. We are not scientists. Mr. Coburn certainly would qualify as a medical doctor, but there are no scientists here of the eminence of people doing this critical work.

Ms. Collins made a very good point, and the point I would like to reiterate from the presentation I made this morning is that there is nobody here arguing against furthering science and furthering embryonic stem cell research. The question is which route we take.

The proposal in S. 30, which Senator Coleman and myself have brought forward, is an affirmation of the need to expand embryonic stem cell research. It is an affirmation that there is a way to do it. In the course of the last couple of years, we have discovered a lot of new, interesting, and dynamic things, most important of which is that 5 of the 21 lines that exist right now, under the grandfather clause the President issued in August of 2001, are lines derived not from the destruction of a live embryo or an implantable embryo but from a naturally dead embryo.

Let me briefly but succinctly go back to that definition. It is very much the same as a clinically dead person with an irreversible cessation of brain waves but the rest of their body still lives on life support so that they are able to donate, through a medical power of attorney, their organs to be transplanted and which can then save a human life. It is the same medical principle, where with that determination of death, although there is still life in the body,

that individual is able, through their grant, to donate their organs in order to save another life.

This is the same principle in terms of naturally dead embryos. Embryos developed for in vitro fertilization, after 3 days, are implantable viable embryos. In 4 additional days, additional embryos are created with the cell mass necessary to become a viable fetus and ultimately a human being. But after the seventh day, which is called level III, or the Gardner III principle, the embryonic stem cell embryos are clinically dead, although cells within the embryo are alive. That is the same principle as an organ donation from an individual who suffers from an irreversible cessation of brain waves.

S. 30, which I stand on the floor today to promote and commend to the Members of the Senate, does exactly and precisely what most of the Members of this body want to do, and that is further the NIH investment in embryonic stem cell research. As I said this morning, three of those lines happen to exist in the State of Georgia. Three lines currently under the grandfather clause issued by the President's Executive order in August of 2001, three lines that currently are continuing to be funded by the National Institutes of Health, three lines that are contributing to the breakthrough or hopefully the steps of the breakthroughs, in terms of any number of cures, but in particular those of diabetes and those of spinal column injury.

By adopting S. 30, sending it to the House and the House adopting it, and the President having said he will sign it, then we know we can break through this logjam and we can create additional lines for embryonic stem cell research and exponentially bring forward the public information that is so necessary in the research and medical community. Because the critical benefit the National Institutes of Health investment makes is it makes the discoveries come into the public domain because the NIH is a public entity and it is the taxpayers' money.

So I would submit that S. 30 is the right way to enhance what most, if not all, here want to do and that is to enhance the cure of dread diseases, the breakthroughs necessary to solve any number of problems, and do so in a way that clearly respects the viability of an embryo by selecting those lines only from embryos that are clinically dead. You are then not destroying what could become a viable human being, but you are adding to and furthering embryonic stem cell research in the same way that 5 of the existing 21 lines currently being researched are being brought forward.

I wish to read one paragraph from Dr. Edward Ferdin, who wrote on the Landry and Zucker report on this very subject, and I quote:

Dr. Landry points out a similar standard is invoked at the

end of life--meaning this dead embryo standard--in the use of

neurological criteria for the determination of death. When

the integrative unit of the body ceases because of the loss

of brain wave, a patient is declared dead even though the

individual cells and tissues of the body may continue to

function for some period of time. In the absence of the

brain, there is no longer a person presently within the body.

The fact that individual cells, tissues, and organs in the

brain-dead body continue to live is what enables transplant

surgeons to save thousands of lives each year through organ

donation.

The same could be true if we were to make the same use of cells of deceased embryos in pursuit of the cures for degenerative diseases and further the advancement of embryonic stem cell research.

I see my colleague from Texas, Senator Cornyn, has come to the floor to speak, so I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a letter from the American Medical Association dated April 10, 2007, be printed in the Record.

I would like to address that for a second. This is a letter that does not endorse a particular bill, but it lays out the AMA's support for embryonic stem cell research. I want to make a couple of affirmations quickly, if I can.

It says:

In general, the AMA supports Federal funding of biomedical

research which promises significant scientific benefits. More

specifically we, support biomedical research on multipotent

stem cells, (including adult and cord blood stem cells);

encourage strong public support of federal funding for

research involving human pluripotent stem cells (embryonic);

and, encourage continued research into scientific issues

surrounding the use of umbilical cord blood-derived

hematopoietic stem cells for transplantation.

Further, AMA research policy supports certain ethical

considerations, including donor anonymity, non-coercion of

donors, absence of financial inducement and written informed

consent of the donor regarding the nature and the scope of

the research involved.

S. 30, the Coleman-Isakson bill, contains exactly each and every one of those items laid out by the American Medical Association.

I might further add, unlike any other legislation, it does not pick a favorite, but it encourages NIE to make investments in all research that has the most imminent promise in terms of benefiting the lives of individuals.

So you heard people talking about embryonic, you heard people talking about adult, you heard people talking about cord blood. The Coleman- Isakson bill recognizes the value of all and leaves to the scientists at NIH the prioritization of those investments but ensures those investments are made in the furtherance of the research, just exactly as indicated in the letter from the AMA.

I see my colleague from Minnesota, Mr. Coleman, is on the Senate floor.

I yield to Senator Coleman.

Mr. President, how much of our time remains?

Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Georgia, Mr. Chambliss.

Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Oklahoma.

Mr. President, if the Senator will yield, I am very grateful for the opportunity. The Senator from Iowa is exactly right, because he is describing in layman's terms what is known as the Gardner principles of in vitro fertilization. After an in vitro fertilization, at the end of 72 hours, clearly transplantable or implantable embryos are formed. Within the next 4 days, up to 7 days, additional viable embryos can actually be developed. At the end of the seventh day, the cellular division process stops. That is called Level III Gardner principles.

To try and use layman's terms to answer the question, because the Senator from Iowa is a great Iowan and I am a Georgian, but I am not a scientist and he isn't either, and we are down here talking about some pretty complicated stuff, the best analogy to make in terms of a naturally dead embryo is the same description you have of death when someone donates their organs after a traumatic brain injury that causes an irreversible cessation of brain waves. By definition in all 50 States, the individual is clinically dead and a living will or a durable power of attorney can direct what is done with the rest of their life in terms of transplanting organs or whatever. The same thing is true in the Gardner principles. After that seventh day, the cellular division stops. The embryo is not sick. The embryo is not handicapped. It is not transplantable and it can't become a fetus, but you can derive stem cells.

I won't take any more of the Senator's time except to say one other thing. There are 21 lines grandfathered in the August 2001 order of the President that still have NIH money being invested. Five of those 21 lines are lines which were derived from naturally dead embryos. For 5\1/2\ years, the NIH has invested money in those lines that were derived from embryos that were destroyed and invested money in those that were derived from embryos that were naturally dead.

I don't have the paper in front of me so I can't read it verbatim, but to go back to my opening remarks today, in each case they have found, in comparing those studies, of those lines over the last 5\1/2\ years, since August of 2001, that they are pluripotent, undifferentiated cells in lines BG01, 02, and 03, which are three of the five lines derived that way. So we have the NIH for 5 years investing in it. We have a clear scientific definition of what an embryo is, which is not a sick embryo, but it is a natural process in Gardner Level III principles of in vitro fertilization. What it does do is it allows you to address the ability to expand stem cell research without crossing the line or destroying a viable embryo.

I yield back.

Again, if the Senator will yield.

In the Gardner principles, all the doctors who perform the great science of in vitro fertilization, which has touched my family and many others--it is great research. It has allowed families to have children who couldn't. After the fertilization you have 3 stages: 72 hours where you have clearly implantable embryos, at 7 days where you still can develop those embryos, and then the remainder which are embryos but do not have under the microscope the cellular collection and cluster of the 8 critical cells to make up an implantable embryo that becomes a fetus. That is made through a scientist, not a politician, looking into a microscope and making those decisions. Again, making the analogy to the irreversible cessation of brain waves, how do we scientifically today, when someone has a traumatic brain injury, determine if they are legally dead? It is done by measuring the brain waves, the same way an in vitro fertilization doctor would measure the cellular division and collection in the remaining embryos after the seventh day.

The only thing I can tell the Senator is the only doctor in the house, Senator Coburn, when asked that question in committee when we had the hearing--and I was at the hearing and so were you-- said: Any doctor who did that would be out of his mind because they would know the implantation could not result in a viable fetus and ultimately a child. That is my only--I am not a scientist, but that is the quote.

Will the Senator yield?

Mr. President, I quoted from that very study today. Those are two distinguished scientists at Columbia University in New York. That paper proposes a principle in terms of future development and decisions. However, I want to repeat for the Senator, in 2001, in August, when the President signed his directive, 5 of the 21 lines that are currently invested in by NIH are those that were developed from naturally dead embryos.

Dr. Steven Stice, the eminent scholar of the Georgia Research Alliance and at the Institute at the University of Georgia operates those three lines today under NIH supervision. They were all derived from naturally dead embryos, and the research they are quite famous for already in terms of addressing diabetes is taking place on those lines.

So I agree 100 percent with everything the Senator read. I read that

paper and I have quoted from that paper. It was just put in front of me and I don't have my glasses on, so I will not get into the big words either. But you are absolutely correct. That was a proposal made on the premise of for the future, but that does not mean the practice did not already exist.

Lastly, the Gardner principles are an accepted principle for in vitro fertilization which have been in existence for decades that clearly delineate the decision between 72 hours, 7 days, and naturally dead embryos.

I yield back to the Senator.

The Senator is a distinguished member of the Senate and a great debater. I want to make one point. Both the Senator's bill and the bill we have introduced and the added ethical criteria you placed in this year's bill prohibit the fertilization of eggs for the purpose of research.

If that is the case, when the Senator made the statement that I was only talking about those used in in vitro, which is different from in utero, which I guess meant implantation, both bills do exactly the same thing. You would never create fertilization farms for research purposes under your legislation, nor under S. 30.

Those embryos developed in in vitro fertilization would in all cases be eggs fertilized for the purpose of creating a viable embryo.

The difference, with all due respect--and I have great respect for the Senator and the character and the quantity and the content of this debate--if you ultimately want to further embryonic stem cell research in the environment that we have, the Gardner principle division in in vitro fertilization for level 3 for the natural death of the embryo, that bridges the ethical question on the destruction of an embryo that was otherwise viable and would be something the White House would sign. So it would further embryonic stem cell research under a proven method which exists today, and NIH, in five different cases, is invested in in terms of BG01, 02 and 03, which happen to be the lines with which I am familiar. With all due respect, since we both prohibit the fertilization of eggs for the purpose of deriving cells for scientific research, it is a matter of how you draw that line.

I appreciate the Senator giving me the time to make that explanation.

If the Senator will let me respond, that is precisely what I am talking about. As we have had 5\1/2\ years since the Presidential directive, and since we--fortunately, and unbeknownst to me certainly, and probably the Senator from Iowa, none of us knew you would have these five lines in those original lines that were grandfathered. So we have had 5\1/2\ years of experience at NIH, with lines derived without destroying physically a viable embryo, but it would, rather, be a natural death. So since you have that, and since it doesn't cross that ethical line, that is what I was referring to. And you would have the opportunity to further the science in a bill that can be passed and not vetoed. So, with all due respect, that is what I was referring to.

May I respond?

I will never, hopefully, debate or question any individual's judgment and morality. I admire it in everybody, and I admire the Senator from Iowa and his principles. The President has made his statement and has said what he would do. My reference was that if science, in the last 5\1/2\ years, has shown us this is a way to further that science without crossing that line, then with respect for his principles and morals, I am looking to find ways that fit rather than ways to argue. That is my point.

And also $132 million for embryonic--those 21 lines.

The Senator makes the point, but if the Senator will yield, I will simply respond.

The President issued that directive in August of 2001. He established that date of August 9. The White House has now said that in the case of S. 30, had the stem cells survived from the naturally dead prohibition, they would live.

That is not everything the Senator from Iowa would like. I understand and respect that. Acknowledging the nice things you said about the legislation, it is a ray of sunshine in the furtherance of that research. I am grateful to the Senator for the time he has allotted me.

Before the Senator does that, I appreciate the Senator asking the questions and allowing me the opportunity to respond and, hopefully, in some way clear up, if not totally at least say where we are coming from based on the scientists I have talked to. I respect him very much.

Mr. President, I wish to respond to the distinguished Senator from Iowa. I have also enjoyed today and appreciate the questions, and hopefully we can do it throughout the rest of the debate so when people cast their votes they are informed.

By way of interest, when we talked about the embryonic stem cell lines derived from naturally dead embryos, I thought it would be appropriate to end my remarks today by just acknowledging that lines BG01 and 02, which are under NIH funding now, which were grandfathered in the President's directive, and which were derived from naturally dead embryos, were the lines upon which the research was applied that has developed the first product to be marketed from embryonic stem cell research, pending patent, to deliver neural progenitor cells which will be the cells that deliver pharmaceutical and other therapy for spinal column and brain injuries.

So it is very important to understand that not only is the process, A, an accepted process, B, currently under funding at NIH, C, covered under the President's directive of 2001, but in that 5\1/2\ years since, research on two of those lines derived from naturally dead embryos is, in fact, producing a remarkable potential product for better health in all of America.

With that said, I, too, yield back all of our time and again thank the Senator from Iowa.

Mr. President, I thank my colleagues for this bill. Senator Coleman and Senator Isakson have put a great deal of time into this bill, and I am pleased to work with them in bringing about this formulation. If I am not already a cosponsor, I ask unanimous consent to be added as a cosponsor.

Unlike many in the Chamber, I am a scientist. I am a physician. I have delivered, at last count, somewhere over 4,000 babies. I understand embryology. I understand the science of molecular biology. This debate is going to come down to a couple of moral questions. There are really two moral questions that this country has to answer. I will talk about those, and then I will talk about a few other things that most people don't want to admit to or discuss, issues surrounding this topic.

The first moral issue is, do we have the capability to destroy life in the name of saving life? That is what we are talking about with embryonic stem cells. We selectively snuff out a life so that we can potentially have a treatment in the future. That is the first great moral question. I have seen the various early stages and then every other stage through pregnancy what that life potential is. It is not to be taken lightly, this step of ignoring life or neutralizing life under the proxy of saying we are going to benefit someone.

We have heard many people talk about the promise of embryonic stem cells. They do yield promise for us. However, it is a long way off. But we need to be careful with this step in the direction of destroying life in the name of saving life.

I thought Senator Isakson did a very good job of explaining embryos that no longer grow. They have quit dividing. They won't be frozen. They won't be implanted. They, in fact, will be discarded. But they still have tremendous value for us for research. As he noted, 5 of the 21 lines presently being researched, and 3 of the 10 lines that presently have no problems whatsoever came from dead embryos, embryos that still have live cells but won't divide again unless induced to do so, and then won't divide into an embryo.

This is a big question for us because how we answer this question today is going to say a lot about the decisions we make in the future. One of the things we are going to hear about is the tremendous amount of excess embryos around. Here is a RAND study report that disputes that. Here is a scientific research organization that looked at the availability of excess embryos and in fact says the claims are not supported by the facts.

I ask unanimous consent to print this in the Record.

The second question we have to ask ourselves is, if you are a mother of a juvenile diabetic, a 2- or 3-year-old, or you are the wife of a Parkinson's patient or the caregiver of somebody with a spinal cord injury, if we told you that in fact we can do everything to produce a cure, to give you the exact same opportunity for a cure without ever destroying the first embryo, which would your choice be? Would your choice be to destroy that embryo or to do it in a nondestructive way getting exactly the same results?

That is where the science is today. That is going to be disputed. But the false hopes that have been created that that is the only way that we can find these cures is nothing but hogwash, scientifically proven hogwash.

The fact is, we don't know what is going to come from embryonic stem cells. We know a lot that will come from other treatments. I just shared with Senator Coleman, we will have a treatment for juvenile diabetes within 5 years, but it won't come from stem cells. It is going to come from the tobacco plant. That is very new research. It has been repeated in mice. It is working. We will have that cure. That is going to get funded, and it will be produced long before anything else that comes to an actual cure.

By the way, autologous stem cells, cells taken from yourself, have already cured five juvenile diabetics by taking the cells from a tube inside the pancreas and growing those cells, regenerating beta cells, and reimplanting those into children who have juvenile diabetes, who are off insulin today. So there are lots of opportunities.

The second moral question that Americans need to ask themselves, as do Members of this body, is if we can do everything without destroying the first embryo, why do we want to destroy embryos? Because it is easy? Because it is convenient? Because we are locked in a mantra that says this is the only way. Think for a minute about what else is going on. We now produce almost every cell type that man has from germ cells, research done in this country, proven in Germany, in Japan, another source of stem cells. Didn't destroy the first embryo, but we have it. Altered nuclear transfer, assisted reprogramming, which you heard Senator Coleman talk about, has not been done in humans yet because it hasn't been funded. The fact is, it has been done in mice. You sit and think, what can happen.

When we heard that these were theories by the Senator from Iowa, going to the Moon was a theory, but we did it. The fact is, there are lots of other theories on how to treat disease out there that we are going to be accomplishing that aren't going to have anything to do with stem cells.

It is important that we don't take our eye off the ball. This is a very key moral question that has to be answered. It has to be answered by all the disease groups out there. If, in fact, we can supply the same product in the same timeline with the same results, why would we want to destroy an embryo? If we could do it in an ethically, morally correct way, why would we do it in an ethically less correct way?

Then there is the little problem that you never hear talked about with stem cells. The only way a stem cell therapy is ever going to work without antirejection drugs, the only way it is ever going to work is if you clone yourself. They don't want to talk about that right now. But for a treatment to happen that will keep you free from rejecting that stem cell, that treatment, that set of cells that is not purely yours will mean anybody who gets a treatment from an embryonically derived stem cell will be on antirejection drugs the rest of their life, which has multiple complications. The solution to that--they don't want to talk about it--is you have to clone yourself. So now we are into cloning ourselves and then destroying ourselves so we can have a treatment for ourselves? That is the dirty little secret that nobody with embryonic stem cells wants to talk about.

The interesting answer to that is altered nuclear transfer, oocyte- assisted reprogramming, which has none of those problems because you use one of your cells into an egg, reprogram it to produce pluripotent cells that never produce an embryo. Nobody wants to talk about the real scientific issue of the problems of a treatment for a disease that we have no treatments for yet, that is well down the road, and the big kicker that will come is, what if we get a treatment and then we try to give it and everybody is going to have to be on an antirejection drug. Everybody knows somebody who has had a transplant. Ask them how they like taking their drugs. They like taking them because they have a new liver or heart or kidney, but if they could not take those drugs and have it, they would much rather have that.

So we set up a false choice. The false choice is, embryonic stem cells or nothing. That is not a real choice for this country.

I believe America is a great land, made up of good people. If we answer this second moral question, if we can do this, and we can, through multiple ways, why would we destroy the first embryo? We do not have to destroy the first embryo.

I think we ought to be considering the moral questions, but also the facts that are going to come about as a result of this fascination and hope for a cure. I have had mothers of juvenile diabetics in my office. I have had family members of Alzheimer's patients. I have had a Parkinson's patient plead with me to do this. When I explain to them what is on the horizon, when I explain to them what the potentials are, all of a sudden this hope that has no substance to it yet whatsoever does not have near the meaning as all the other things that are going on that do have meaning.

So we need to refocus on the real search, the real potential that is in front of our country and answer this best, most important moral question: Do we steal life from the innocent to potentially give life to the maimed or the injured or diseased, or do we, in fact, do it in a way that never steals life and accomplishes the same goal?

That is the real question before the Senate. S. 30 does that. S. 5 does not. That is the division. One says: To heck with the ethics, to heck with the problems associated with it, to heck with the rejection, to heck with the antirejection drugs, to heck with the idea we cannot clone ourselves, we want to go this way only.

S. 30 allows all the options, all the accomplishments, all the potential without violating the first ethical clause. That is the question America needs to ask itself in this debate. We can give to all those who are desirous of all these needed benefits of cure and treatment, and we can do it in an ethically responsible manner that will send us down the right road for this country, not the wrong road.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have been listening to the debate on this bill from my office. I have written down some of the miraculous statements that have been made on the floor of the Senate, and I thought I would resubmit some of them with some constructive criticism.

Seventy-eight stem cell lines are no longer useful. That is not accurate. All stem cell lines are contaminated with mouse feeder cells. Not true, either. The policy does not work. Not true. Research on stem cells under the present cannot go forward. I would remind the body that stem cells, embryonic stem cells are being researched every day in this country with private money. This is about using Federal dollars to destroy embryos; it is not about blocking embryonic stem cell research.

The statement was made by the Senator from California that these are embryos that would already be destroyed. Now that is not accurate at all. Only S. 5 embraces all forms of stem cell research. S. 30 embraces every form of stem cell research, including embryonic stem cells, but it makes the correct distinction of taking a nonviable embryo that is still viable for embryonic stem cells but not viable to create a human and uses those instead of the true potential-for-life embryos. There would be no limitation on the numbers of these.

If we go to a fertility clinic today where embryos are created, what we see is a range of embryos in terms of their quality. Then they are graded. Some are implantable. Some are frozen. Some have quit dividing. Those that quit dividing but are not dead but don't have the potential are the ones S. 30 will allow to be used for embryonic stem cells. It bypasses the ethical dilemma we have and still gives us embryonic stem cell research.

It was just released by the Journal of the American Medical Association and was on CNN, 13 young people from the ages of 14 to 31, now living in Brazil, who had type 1 diabetes were treated with their own immune cells given back to them, and they now live without insulin. That was released today. It didn't have anything to do with an embryonic stem cell.

Someone during the debate said: We all know embryonic stem cells hold the most potential. I believe the Presiding Officer now in the chair said that. That is not true. They don't hold the most potential. They hold great research potential, but what we ought to be interested in is therapeutics. How do we treat diseases? How do we accomplish therapies to do the most good for the most people?

What we are going to find out is, there will be some potential from embryonic stem cells. But if I had a child with diabetes, I would want it fixed as soon as I could, not 10 or 15 years from now. The fact is, we have all these treatments that are coming about. I am convinced, as much as I am alive and standing here today, that within 10 years new onset type 1 diabetics will be cured within 2 months of the onset of their disease. That is going to happen. We are going to see that. We will see tremendous treatments for that, whether from germ cell lines, embryonic stem cell lines that are harvested correctly and ethically, and other treatments, including autologous or their own stem cells used to treat the body.

I introduced into the Record the RAND study on the available embryos. We had it quoted today, there are 400,000 of them out there. That is not true. It is more like 13,000 available. So when we have this exaggerated claim that 400,000 embryos are waiting to be destroyed for embryonic stem cell research, that is not true.

I am happy to yield.

That is correct.

There is no question it happens every day. One of the things we have seen in our State is, we sometimes overfertilize eggs and create too many. But when it comes down to the individual couple who says: We are going to try this implantation, we are going to save these, then if they have a child, they may want to have another child, so that many of these are saved in reserve for that family. To say there are 400,000 when, in fact, there are probably less than 13,000 that could be available, if you look at the other side of that, how many nongrowing, nonviable embryos are available today? Fifty to seventy to one hundred thousand of the stage 3 embryos that can be used for embryonic stem cell that doesn't violate the ethical dilemma we face today. So the reason I put the RAND study in there is so the Record will show the facts, not the desire of a Member of the Senate to overstate the case. The fact is, there are less than 13,000 available. The fact is, level 3 embryos, there are 100,000 available. Nobody talks about that. In fact, 3 of the 10 that are the best lines right now running came from exactly that source. So we know that is the potential.

Let me continue. We had the statement: Science without ethics is like a ship without a rudder. That is true. Therefore, when we start destroying life, where is our rudder? When we start marginalizing the weakest and the most vulnerable in our society to say we are going to do something good somewhere when, in fact, the science doesn't show that yet, where is our rudder? That is what S. 30 does. S. 30 gives an ethical option for every need we have in the scientific community to accomplish everything the scientific community wants to accomplish. There are no limitations in S. 30.

The Senator from Minnesota has made the point, President Bush is going to veto S. 5. He has already said he is going to veto it. So a year from now, where do we want to be in terms of stem cell research? Do we want to have more embryonic stem cell lines and do we want to have more embryonic stem cell lines the NIH can use money to research on? The answer is, yes, we do. There is one way to do that. That is S. 30. S. 30 allows that. I am convinced, as an obstetrician and as a scientist, that 10 years from now we won't use embryos whatsoever to produce stem cells. We will use embryonic stem cells to help us research genetics and drug treatments for difficult diseases that we already have, and we will use other methods to produce cell lines that will give us cures to disease.

I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record the recent announcement of the article in JAMA on CNN, ``Type 1 diabetics live without insulin in stem cell experiment.''

There are two ethical questions America has to answer. One is, is it OK to destroy life with the potential of helping cure maladies--we haven't seen it yet--with the potential, the hope to cure maladies? In the midst of that ethical question, is it OK to destroy that life when you could do the same thing without destroying life by using class 3 embryos? That is the first ethical dilemma. The second ethical dilemma we face as a nation and as citizens of this country and as Members of this body is, if in fact it is true there are other ways to get to the exact same goal of treatments--we all want to fulfill the hopes and the desires, whether they are paraplegics, quadriplegics, diabetics, Parkinson's or others, all these tremendous diseases that we know we are going to be able to eventually find a cure for--if we can do that without ever having to destroy the first embryo, wouldn't we all rather go that way? That is what S. 30 offers. S. 30 offers an opportunity to accomplish exactly the same thing without destroying the first life. How we answer that question is going to say a lot about our country.

My hope is a year from now we are standing on this floor and seeing all this promise come true, whether it be altered nuclear transfer, whether it be germ cell, which I happen to believe is going to be another great option in terms of multipotent and pluripotent stem cells, that we will see the fruits and the wisdom of the Senate that passes a bill, S. 30, which actually makes a difference. S. 5 isn't going to make any difference. It is going to get vetoed. It is not going to do anything to help us except create a political posture that the President has said he will not bow to. He is not going to sign it. He is going to veto it, and the House will not override it. So the question is, if you want to give hope, if you want to promote a potential for treatment and cures for all these strong and tough diseases families are facing and individual patients are facing, the way to do that is to make sure S. 30 becomes law. It will, in fact, be the thing that makes the difference. S. 5 won't. S. 5 is going to get vetoed, and we will be back here doing the same thing next year and the next year and the next year.

The point is, let's do what we can today, and S. 30 accomplishes that.

I thank the Senator and yield the floor.

A shade over 4,000.

I wanted to add one other thing. When the American people think about stem cells and potential treatments, the thing that is never talked to them about is the idea of tissue rejection. There isn't going to be an embryonic stem cell that produces a cell that can be used in any human without the use of antirejection drugs. The only way you can get around that is to clone yourself. The only way you can get around it totally, without any rejection whatsoever, is to be a female and clone yourself, because cells have these wonderful little engines in them called mitochondria. They have separate DNA. That DNA of the cloned egg will be accomplished as a part of that.

So this idea we think we are going to have this great answer, even once we get to treatments--treatments that use embryonic stem cells rather than altered nuclear transfer, or oocyte-assisted reprogramming--those cells will all have to have accompanying with them, all those treatments, anti-rejection drugs.

If you know anybody who has had any type of organ transplant, ask them how it is to take those drugs. The only way you do that is, we come to the next ethical dilemma: Is it OK for you to clone yourself, then destroy that life you have cloned so you can take part of that for you? All those ethical dilemmas are gone in altered nuclear transfer because now you are inserting stem cells from your own body. They are your own cells. There is no rejection.

In this study in Brazil I just put in the Record, there is no rejection because they are using their own cells. They have eliminated the ability of their body to destroy their islet cells in their pancreas and have done that with their own cells. There is no rejection so they are not on any medicines. They are not on insulin anymore because they are now producing insulin.

So the fact is, we should make sure we understand if and when--and there is no guarantee the ``when'' is going to come--we have embryonic stem cell treatments, those are going to be accompanied by antirejection treatments as well. However, if you use your own cells for the same treatment--we heard Senator Brownback talk about the numerous studies that are ongoing now with autologous or self-giving reparations from your own body--there is no rejection issue.

So it is easy for us to talk, and it is easy for us to offer hope, but we need to make sure when we talk about that hope, when we talk about embryonic stem cells, we are balancing it with a realism that we are not off treatment, even though we offer a cure, because now we have a treatment to make sure the cure works. So it is a step that is positive, but it is not the panacea that has been described on this floor today.

I thank my colleague from Georgia, who shares the passion of the Senator from Iowa, shares the passion of the Senator from Pennsylvania. We want to see scientific breakthroughs. We want to see cures for those kids who suffer from juvenile diabetes and friends who have ALS. I have a brother-in-law who suffers from Parkinson's.

How do we get there? Senator Specter noted that, as he filled an hourglass and said: The clock is ticking--and it is. The question becomes how do we move forward, not just in the debate but action. I am a former mayor. If it snowed in St. Paul and the streets weren't plowed, I heard about it. That is what you do--take action.

If we look at the amount of research going on in stem cell research, human embryonic stem cell research--they are pluripotent. What we are talking about is an ability of stem cells to--they have apparently an incredible elastic ability to be perhaps transformed to a heart or a liver, an incredible capacity--in theory. But clearly, scientists, I think uniformly, believe there is great hope and great opportunity there.

The reality today is that there is a certain amount of Federal dollars. What we are talking about is Federal dollars. We are not talking about the sum of all research but simply, What does the Federal Government do? What do we do with taxpayer dollars? Where do we put them?

In terms of human embryonic, pluripotent, the President said--I think it was in 2001--he talked about a series of lines that would be available, just that. He was drawing the line there in terms of embryonic stem cells. Of those lines, originally there were 60 or 70, and there are now about 20 lines.

There is about $132 million being spent in Federal money in human embryonic stem cell research and over $1 billion in human nonembryonic cord blood stem cell, bone marrow, other kinds of research--all of which is promising. In some areas, there are actually therapies going on.

It is fascinating. Scientists are also very passionate. I am not a scientist, but I have been listening to them. There are those scientists who are advocates of embryonic stem cell, and they are passionate that this is the way. Clearly, in theory, in terms of pluripotency, embryonic stem cells have more pluripotency than adult stem cells, but the critics say you have the process of embryonic stem cells, that they have the rejection because when you have organ transplants, you put another genetic material into somebody, and there are problems of rejection. You have the problem of tumors growing from them. They say we have to support adult stem cell because that is where the work is being done, that is where the breakthroughs are happening. Of course, other scientists come back and say, rightfully so, that adult stem cells do not have the elasticity, the pluripotency of embryonic, and so that is not the way. The question is, Is there a third way? Is there a way to get past the culture wars, to get past the great divide we have?

There are many in this country who believe passionately that Federal dollars should not be used for research which involves the destruction of a human embryo, who believe very passionately about that. There are others who say the cause of science is so great, the size of this embryo is so small, the hope we have to offer is so great, we need to move forward. There is a divide.

The reality today is, with policy as it is, if the Harkin-Specter bill passes--which I presume it will, probably overwhelmingly it will pass--and a similar bill is passed in the House and ultimately we work out the language and the President then vetoes it and, as my colleague from Pennsylvania recognizes, there are not enough votes to override the veto, at the end of the day of January 1, 2008, there will still not be more than $132 million spent on human embryonic pluripotency research.

The question is, Is there another way? Senator Isakson has talked about another way. He talked about dead embryos. My colleague from Iowa dismissed it: Dead embryos, what does that mean?

My colleague explained it well, that embryonic stem cells produced by that method have the same pluripotency, the same capacity as other embryonic stem cells, but they do not cross the moral line.

Within S. 30, there is the point of doing other kinds of research that does not cross the moral line. One is called altered nuclear transfer. Later I will, perhaps, put up some charts to show how it works, but very simply, if you think about it, science 101, take an egg and sperm, they come together, create an embryo, become a person--one of the pages here or a Senator or mom and dad sitting somewhere. Then what we do with altered nuclear transfer--actually, by the way, if you relate it to cloning, it is not cloning, but if you think of the concept of cloning, you take an egg, put some genetic material from an adult in there, and it becomes a person. Practically, we had Dolly the sheep, so we know that works. Altered nuclear transfer basically says take that egg, take some genetic material, and before you put it in there, you program the egg so it doesn't create an embryo but creates a tissue mass which has the same pluripotency, the ability to do all the other things any other embryonic stem cell would do.

I have a series of letters from scientists who say this should work. I will quote:

Research results suggest that Altered Nuclear Transfer may

be able to produce human pluripotent stem cells--the

functional equivalent of embryonic stem cells--in a manner

that is simpler and more efficient than current methods.

That is by Hans Schoeler, chairman of the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology at the Max Planck Institute in Germany.

Recently, multiple labs in the United States and around the

world have published or reported experiments in which adult

cells were converted, not to embryos, but directly to

pluripotent ``embryonic-like'' cells. The resulting cells

were virtually indistinguishable from embryonic stem cells

derived from embryos. The techniques used have included

altered nuclear transfer, cell fusion and chemical

reprogramming. The results were obtained from the top

scientists in the field and published in the best journals.

That is by Markus Grompe, M.D., Oregon Stem Cell Center.

One last quote:

I think that current scientific evidence and reasonable

expectations make it likely that altering a donor nucleus to

preclude normal organization of any subsequent blastocyst is

technically feasible and consistent with the scientific and

medical goals of embryonic stem cell research.

That is by Lawrence S.B. Goldstein, Ph.D., Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of California, San Diego.

Much of the work is from a doctor, Dr. William B. Hurlbut, over at Stanford, the Neuroscience Institute at Stanford. I worked with him. He has published a lot on this issue. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a presentation by Dr. Hurlbut entitled ``Stem Cells, Embryos and Ethics: Is There a Way Forward?''

Mr. President, I want to briefly touch on one other aspect of the bill we have not talked about. I do want to thank my colleague from Oklahoma for articulating what is the basic issue: if we can move science forward without crossing a moral line, if we can avoid the great division in America. Scientific research should be something that as a society we embrace. S. 30 gives us the opportunity to do that. I hope my colleagues from all perspectives on this issue decide they will support S. 30.

One other aspect of S. 30 that is important is there is a provision in the bill that calls for the Secretary of Health and Human Services to look into setting up a national amniotic and placental stem cell bank.

There are three banks of stem cells in this country. I believe Wisconsin has the 21 embryonic stem cell lines of the 78 the President originally authorized. In Minnesota, there is a cord blood cell bank, and there is a bone marrow bank.

What we hope to do, based on research that has recently come to

light--Wake Forest has done some of it--is have the use of amniotic and placental stem cells. These are stem cells, by the way, that can be grown in large quantities. They do not produce tumors, which occur in other types of stem cells. The Wake Forest scientists have noted the specialized cells generated from amniotic cells really, in effect, may have--again, this is all potential--but there is the potential to have the kind of elasticity and pluripotency we see in embryonic stem cells--high-flexibility growth potential in many ways resembling human embryonic stem cells.

The hope is to put together a tissue sampling of 100,000 tissues which would then give you the kind of ability to cut across a diversity we do not have today with the research that is going on.

Again, if S. 5 is passed, it will be vetoed, and the science will not be moved forward. But if S. 30 is passed, with the provisions that provide for stem cell research, that will provide for pluripotent research, that will provide for dead embryo research, which would give you, again, the same kind of stem cells you get from any other kind of embryonic stem cells--these are some of the new techniques out there.

In addition, S. 30 contains a provision for moving forward with a national amniotic and placental stem cell bank, which is another opportunity to move the research forward and to move from hope to reality, which is certainly the hope of the authors of this bill.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we yield back the remainder of our time.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Georgia for his leadership and the opportunity to work together on something that I hope is a unifying force for this body. Let's agree where we can agree. I think that is what S. 30 offers.

I listened to the debate on S. 5. I see my colleague, the Senator from Iowa. I do not know if there is a greater champion in the Senate than the Senator from Iowa when it comes to supporting the rights of individuals with disabilities. I worked on disability discrimination when I graduated law school 30 years ago. One of my heroes in this regard has always been the Senator from Iowa.

Coauthor of S. 5 is my colleague from Utah, Senator Hatch. I don't know if there is a man of greater moral integrity in this body than Orrin Hatch. He is an extraordinary man. He and I have had long conversations about this bill. Good people disagree.

For some of us there is that moral line that says we cannot support Federal funding for the destruction of a human embryo. It is a line that a number of people cannot cross. So what happens is, if we have a concern of just having S. 5--and there is a battle that is being waged there. Again, it will pass. It will pass in this body and pass in the House. Then the reality is it will be vetoed. There will not be enough votes to override the veto. So in the end, those with good intentions who want to move science forward are not going to be able to do that.

This message to those who are suffering from ALS and suffering from juvenile diabetes--the research is not going to be moved forward at all.

A number of my colleagues have put forth S. 30 as an opportunity. Dr. Hurlbut said: We offer one small island of unity in a sea of controversy, a place we can come together and promote the opportunity and support pluripotent stem cell research, research that has the ability to provide the kind of flexible cell material that offers great hope. Again, hope; it offers great hope.

The good news is research is going forward in this area. This research offers an opportunity, not just in the area of stem cell research, but if you talk to some of the scientists, science itself is going to be opened, perhaps, to other advancements. We are going to learn more about stem cells just from doing this research.

I have a chart that lays out what ANT is. This is just one of the options under S. 30. S. 30 would provide Federal funding for research that does not involve the destruction of an embryo. Some of it is dead embryo research. This is ANT. Under the natural process you have a fertilized egg, the egg and sperm, the fertilized egg that becomes an embryo.

SCNT, as I understand it, is the way we got Dolly the sheep. We have a somatic cell from an adult. It was an animal--or it could be from a human. You put that cellular material, which has all the DNA, all that program in the enucleated egg, the egg gets fertilized, and you get an embryo.

What ANT does, and the type of research, among a number of options-- there are some thoughts you could reprogram these cells. You could do a range of things, but what you are doing is altering the cell nucleus. It is kind of a key in there, something that unlocks the cell. If you take it out--I think it is CDX2, but I am not a scientist. But what you essentially do if you take that out before you transfer into this enucleated egg, before you put this genetic material with all the DNA and everything in there, in the end what you are going to get is an inner cell mass with all the ability to produce the pluripotent cells that you would get, but there is no embryo, and it doesn't cross the moral line.

The opportunity for this Congress, in a bipartisan way, to support this kind of research is a positive thing.

I see my colleague from Missouri. I have some other comments, but I believe we have some time, and I will use that time later.

I want to reiterate that I hope my colleagues who support S. 5--we simply have disagreement over crossing that line--I hope they can come with us and support S. 30.

My concern is about the House. Last year this body passed a bill similar to S. 5. It also passed the Specter-Santorum bill, which provided, by the way, a number of alternative means of producing cells. Some of those, by the way, are included in S. 5. But, again, S. 5 will not become law.

If you want alternative ways to go forward, you have to support S. 30. The House killed the Specter-Santorum bill. Their approach was, they wanted to have 100 percent of nothing--no alternative ways if they didn't get exactly what they wanted in their bill that was similar to

Will the Senator from Oklahoma yield?

I believe the Senator from Oklahoma earlier introduced a RAND study that talked about the number of embryos. I believe there are nearly 400,000 that may be in IVF clinics. Apparently, only 2.8 percent have the potential to be discarded. Is that correct?

Is there a sense that the Senator from Oklahoma has in terms of decisions that parents and others are making about the kind of life potential of those 97 percent that are not being discarded, that are being frozen for future attempts at pregnancy?

I yield 2 additional minutes to the Senator from Oklahoma.

I thank the Senator from Oklahoma for both his passion and his expertise. I think he said this morning--how many babies has the Senator delivered?

This is one Senator who understands the value of life and has a hands-on approach.

It is interesting. President Clinton's bioethics commission concluded, if we have some other alternatives, why wouldn't we use them? They concluded the derivation of stem cells from embryos remaining following infertility treatments is justifiable only if no less morally problematic alternatives are available for advancing the research. I believe what is happening is the science is moving faster than the politics, that we have today the opportunity through a number of processes to move forward with pluripotent stem cell research in ways that are less morally problematic, that don't cross a line, that don't cross the line that says we should not have Federal funding for the destruction of a human embryo.

I know my colleagues and friends who support S. 5 quite often have talked about excess embryos that we have and that may not be used for any other purpose. I would ask them to ask these questions. I believe their intent is this narrow intent, but as you look at S. 5, the question raised is, is this the beginning of the production of embryos? If in fact this is the acceptable path to go, why wouldn't we produce embryos that would then get Federal funding to do the research? Is the use of these embryos only for the purpose of stem cell research? Where would we draw the line? Who draws that line? Why wouldn't we use this to study embryonic growth, cell patterns, a whole range of other things? Once we have crossed the line, where does it end? If it is difficult to coax embryonic stem cells into the desired kinds of differentiated type cell types, would we want to allow the embryos to develop longer so we could kind of coax them into later development so we can see that later stage embryos may be a better source of more advanced cells and tissues and organs? Even if we don't do that, if we move down this path, are there other nations or other countries that don't have the kind of moral concerns we have? Why would they not want to go that route?

We have already begun the process. What we offer in S. 30 is a possibility to bring this country together to provide

Federal funding for stem cell research that provides the hope of what pluripotent stem cells may be able to do. It sets up a tissue bank for amniotic and placental stem cells which offer great promise without the moral dilemma. At a time when clearly the Nation is divided, we offer a time to come together.

My concern is, last year we passed a bill in this Senate that provided for alternatives, Specter-Santorum. It was rejected in the House. I hope my colleagues don't take an all-or-nothing approach. I hope they don't look to get 100 percent of nothing--nothing meaning that S. 5 is going to be vetoed--and then stop us from at least moving forward with the opportunity to put Federal dollars in research and production doing stem cell research that doesn't cross a moral line.

I see my colleague from Oklahoma.

Mr. President, how much time do I have left?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from Markus Grompe, MD, from the Oregon Health & Science University.

In that letter Dr. Grompe talks about what my colleague from Oklahoma just talked about. He talks about producing cells that are immunologically matched to the patient from whom they were derived. He says:

These cells could then be used for transplantation without

being rejected by the immune system. It is also expected that

these approaches will make the production of pluripotent cell

lines technically easier and more efficient than methods that

rely on embryos.

Then he goes on to say:

In my own laboratory we would use the alternative methods

to produce liver and pancreas cells for the treatment of

liver diseases and diabetes.

We have an opportunity under S. 30 to move the research forward, to move it forward in a unified way, a way that avoids the culture wars, avoids the great divide, that has the opportunity for moving forward without dealing with the issues of immune reactions that opens up a vision of hope. This is about hope. S. 30 is hope offered through principled and ethical stem cell research--the HOPE Act.

I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle--whatever their position is on S. 5--understand if they want to move the ball forward, if they want to look into the eyes of their constituents and say we are going to give you something, some sense of hope, we are going to move research forward, the only way to do that today is through supporting S. 30. I urge my colleagues to support S. 30.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and yield back the remainder of our time.