Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong support of this legislation, and I want to commend the chairman and ranking member for their open-mindedness in allowing me to be a part of this process.

The bill before us today is a demonstration of the American people extending the hand of compassion and hope to millions of people suffering worldwide from AIDS.

The level of commitment to end HIV/AIDS demonstrated in this bill before us today is long overdue. Previous attempts to address the issue of global HIV/AIDS channeled millions of dollars into unaccountable multilateral efforts

and programs that showed little effectiveness and did little to stem the death toll.

H.R. 1298 reforms the status quo, ensures the most effective use of every dollar and puts new policies in place to help save lives. The bill sets a new course by focusing on real solutions, such as the model provided by Uganda.

The bill requires financial accountability and opens doors to programs that have a history of doing much with little. H.R. 1298 features a strong abstinence education component that has been proven to save lives by eliminating risky sexual behavior.

This is a very important point.

One of the key components of H.R. 1298 is a clear focus on prevention through education. The bill promotes primary prevention by funding activities that help individuals avoid HIV infection. Instead of just working towards reducing the prevalence of HIV/AIDS, this bill seeks to help young people adopt behaviors where the risk of HIV/AIDS can be eliminated. No longer do we just seek to manage the sure death of HIV infection. This bill empowers young people to participate in a future free from the behavioral risks of contracting HIV/AIDS.

The bill distinguishes between true primary prevention efforts, such as abstinence education, from intervention activities that promote condoms under the guise of prevention. The bill distinguishes between prevention services that are appropriate for everyone and preventive intervention that helps a segment of the population engaging in risky behavior. As a physician who previously cared for AIDS patients, I know that encouraging this primary prevention approach will save lives, and save money.

Another key component of the bill is bringing faith-based organizations into full participation with efforts to combat HIV/AIDS. Local churches and faith-based groups promote behavior change to prevent HIV, reduce the stigma associated with HIV infection, and treat those afflicted with the disease and care for orphans.

The Catholic Church alone currently cares for one in four people being treated by HIV/AIDS worldwide. Mission organizations already possess much of the infrastructure, experience, knowledge and compassion necessary to combat AIDS. They also have a history of respecting the culture and values of indigenous communities and peoples so that lasting relationships and change can occur. And faith-based groups are doing this in the most remote areas with the greatest need.

Up until now, resources that could have helped the efforts of churches and faith-based approaches have been soaked up by large international special interests. My missionary friends in Africa tell me about the many hats, T-shirts and conferences that UNAIDS provides to promote condoms and HIV/AIDS awareness. Unfortunately, few real resources are provided to help prevent HIV/AIDS infection.

I am personally aware of faith-based organizations that have been in- country for years, that have the support of the community, that have the support of the government and have brought people of different faiths together around strategies that are culturally and age- appropriate, but yet have been refused resources through USAID and UN- funded programs. Or they have been given a deal to promote condoms or get nothing.

H.R. 1298 will open up new avenues to fund powerful faith-based efforts that save lives in the poorest and most remote places. I strongly encourage all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this legislation.

Mr. Chairman, I am delighted to be an original cosponsor of the bill, and I again commend the chairman, the ranking member and their staff for crafting what I feel is a very, very good piece of legislation.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the Pitts amendment. According to the World Health Organization data, abstinence education programs work to reduce the premarital sex rate for Ugandan males, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania earlier said, in 1989 60 percent to 23 percent. For females the decline was 53 percent to 16 percent. The proportion of males reporting three or more sexual partners fell from 15 percent to 3 percent. With each successive sexual partner one has, their probability of contracting HIV goes up proportionally and by reducing the income of sexual partners, increasing the age of sexual debut, by increasing the incidence of abstinence before marriage, faithfulness in marriage, the rate in Uganda declined by half.

I think this is a very modest amendment. I actually think we should be putting substantially more money than he is proposing into abstinence education because it has been shown scientifically to be the most effective way and cost-effective way to prevent the spread of this disease. I strongly urge all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support the Pitts amendment, a very well-thought-out amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me.

As one of the 250 cosponsors of H.R. 1036, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, I rise in strong support of this bill and against this amendment.

The right of law-abiding citizens to purchase and own firearms is guaranteed in the second amendment. Those behind these lawsuits have one aim, and that is to undermine the guarantee in the Bill of Rights.

As we speak, anti-second amendment organizations are shopping around for sympathetic judges who will be willing to rule that firearms manufacturers are liable for individuals using guns in the commission of crimes. While virtually every lawsuit brought against gun manufacturers has been thrown out of court, it is only a matter of time until a liberal judge, sympathetic to the anti-second amendment lobby, rules in their favor.

The aim of these suits is to tie up firearms manufacturers in court and raise the cost of firearms to those who purchase them legally. The only end result of these lawsuits would be a larger underground market in firearms.

Defenders in these lawsuits will say it is about justice for crime victims. The true impetus behind these lawsuits, however, is to bypass the Congress, the will of the American people, and to enact de facto gun control by using the courts.

Gun control advocates have come to realize that they have very little chance of moving their anti-second amendment agenda through Congress, so they have turned to excessive lawsuits and the courts. This legislation not only will not protect gun distributors who do not follow the strict laws regarding firearms; it will also not protect manufacturers that sell defective products. It merely protects firearms manufacturers who are abiding by the law from frivolous lawsuits designed to bankrupt legal, law-abiding gun manufacturers.

No one would think of holding GM responsible for an accident caused by a drunk driver, or Louisville Slugger responsible for someone using a baseball bat in the commission of a crime. So why should law-abiding firearms manufacturers be punished for criminals using their products illegally?

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of this supplemental--funding to provide for our troops and homeland security.

This supplemental will support the men and women of our Armed Forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom and help provide humanitarian relief for the people of Iraq.

The brutality of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime continues to be revealed through the brave efforts of the men and women of our Armed Forces. Saddam's death squads--his enforcers--go into cities to ensure that the people not rise up against him. They execute civilians. They go door-do-door, take children from their homes, and hold them hostage under the threat of massacre. Saddam Hussein's regime has a documented record of gassing, torturing, raping and executing its own people.

While there are many dangers in the world, the threat from this Iraqi regime stands alone--because, as President Bush has said, it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place under the leadership of a merciless dictator.

What if we had refused to take the necessary action to stop this Iraqi dictator from building his weapons of mass destruction--chemical, biological, and nuclear? What if we had allowed him to supply these weapons to international terrorists?

My friends, not long ago we came to the Floor and voted to allow President Bush to use every tool at his disposal to stop this threat to the American people and the world. We must make sure that our military has everything it needs to do the job that they have been asked to do.

Under difficult circumstances, our troops continue to make good progress toward our objectives of ending the Iraqi regime, freeing the Iraqi people, and disarming the country of weapons of mass destruction. Our forces are fighting well, with overwhelming force, and have defeated every threat they have encountered.

It is our obligation to make sure that they are fully supported in this endeavor. I urge my colleagues to vote for this supplemental.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time of the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton).

Madam Speaker, I rise this afternoon to salute a great American, Private Michael

Russell Creighton-Weldon. Private Creighton-Weldon of Palm Bay, Florida, was killed this past weekend while serving in Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was one of the soldiers killed by the suicide bomber driving the taxi.

Private Creighton-Weldon was in Company A, the 27th Infantry, Third Division, out of Fort Stewart, Georgia. My prayers and condolences are with Michael's family during this hour of loss. My family and my staff grieve with them in honor of Michael.

President Lincoln was once quoted saying that we as a nation ``should have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty.'' Michael dared to do his duty, and in so doing, he gave the ultimate sacrifice for our continued freedom. We owe him a debt of gratitude that we can never repay.

This morning, I had the honor of speaking to Michael's mother, retired U.S. Army Sergeant Major Jean Weldon. She said that Michael, or Big Mike as his family affectionately called him, was a hero to his family and now he is a hero for America.

Mrs. Weldon also had great praise for the Palm Bay Police Department and the mayor for the support that they have provided her during this time of grieving. Specifically, they have had to deploy officers to her house to keep the press away from her and her family who have been very grieved by the constant approaches of the press. And I think America's press should be aware of this that one grieving mom would like some space and that they should be sensitive to this all across the Nation because I am sure her experience is not unique.

While sadness comes with the loss of each soldier, we can have faith in our military commanders and in our Commander in Chief. Coalition forces continue to make good progress towards our objective of ending the Iraqi regime, freeing the Iraqi people, and disarming the country of weapons of mass destruction. It was in this cause that Michael gave his life, and it is a worthy cause.

Secretary Rumsfeld said this past weekend that there are difficult days ahead. We know this in Palm Bay, as we are experiencing it firsthand. To the extent that the Republican Guard poses difficulties, which we expect them to, there will be dangerous days ahead, Mr. Rumsfeld went on to say. Baghdad may not be easy, but the outcome is certain and at some point the Iraqi people will end up fearing Saddam Hussein and his regime less and they will end up anticipating liberation and freedom more; and it will end and it will end successfully.

The true nature of the Iraqi regime is being revealed by what we see. Brutal treatment of POWs; use of human shields to protect military assets from attack; the torching of oil fields which are the future of the Iraqi people; false reports about coalition attacks on civilians, mosques and cultural centers; lies about Iraqi adherence to Geneva Conventions which they have blatantly violated; Feyadeen infiltration of regular Iraqi forces to prevent surrender and defection; using false acts of surrender in flagrant violation of the laws of war, and using them to attack coalition forces; and, yes, the use of suicide bombers, one of whom took the life of a great American, Michael Russell Creighton-Weldon.

We all in the 15th congressional district and in our Nation salute Michael for the service he provided our Nation and the sacrifice he made. We join with his mother, his father, his entire extended family in extending our condolences, and our prayers are with them and our Nation and our troops in the field as we continue in this cause.

I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, I practiced defensive medicine for 15 years before I was elected to Congress. Defensive medicine is extremely costly. The way it works is very simple. The patient comes in. You think the patient has something. And then you think of all the other things that it could be and how you could be sued if you missed those things, so you order more and more tests. You may say, well, this is just one doctor speaking anecdotally, but actually this very issue was studied scientifically in California. They looked at the reforms put in place in California and its impact on charges in the Medicare plan. They discovered that over time after the cap on damages went into place and the threat of very, very excessive damages went away that charges for two diagnostic codes, the two codes they looked at were unstable angina and myocardial infarction, went down and there was no increase in morbidity and mortality. In other words, quality was maintained while charges went down.

This study was published in 1995 in the Journal of Economics. It was done by economics professors at Stanford University. They argued that the high cost of litigation cost the Medicare plan billions of dollars a year in unnecessary procedures and tests. They further went on to say that it cost, in 1995 dollars, our health care system $50 billion a year. Today that figure is estimated at over $100 billion a year.

Mr. Speaker, this is not just an issue of access. We are going to hear about access from the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Keller). He is going to talk about the trauma facility in Orlando, Florida, being closed down because of this problem. This is not just an issue of high cost. This is an issue of the uninsured. As the costs go up because of the high cost of litigation, more and more people are pushed out of the insured market into the uninsured category. We all say here that we care about the uninsured, the people who cannot afford health care, but this is impacting them. This is impacting our competitiveness in the global marketplace because all these costs of litigation get transferred into the costs of health care that get transferred into the costs of our products and services as we compete in the global marketplace.

If we pass this bill and if the other body passes it, the President has said he would sign it, it is going to allow more people to get access to health care, it is going to reduce our costs through the Medicare plan, and we may ultimately be able to better afford more services through Medicare like prescription drugs. And, yes, it will help our businesses and industries to be more competitive in the global marketplace.

This is a good rule, it is a fair rule, and this is an extremely important bill. I encourage all my colleagues to vote ``yes.''

I want to thank my colleague from Georgia, a former practicing physician in the practice of OB/GYN for his leadership on this very, very important issue. This is obviously a national crisis. It has regional features to it. California is not in the throes. They passed their malpractice reform.

We have got a real problem in Florida. Indeed, the Level 1 trauma center at Orlando Regional Medical Center is about to close down. The principal reason for that is they cannot get enough neurosurgeons to support the trauma center. One of the principal reasons they cannot get enough neurosurgeons to support it is that they cannot recruit physicians into the State of Florida and one of the biggest reasons for that is the astronomical cost of medical malpractice in the State of Florida. This is becoming an access issue. In the central Florida area of Orlando and the east central coast, Brevard County, where I live, you have upwards of 2, 3 million people in this region and we are going to lose one of the principal trauma centers. So people are going to suffer. People are going to die because of the medical malpractice crisis that we are facing in this Nation today.

I just want to address one very, very important issue about this whole matter. This is an incredible cost to our economy. It is an incredible drag on our whole health care system. There was an outstanding study. It was published in the Journal of Economics in 1995 out of California. They looked at the costs for two diagnostic codes, unstable angina and myocardial infarction, pre-California MICRA reforms, and then post-California MICRA reforms and showed a dramatic reduction, $500 million in the State of California for just those two diagnostic codes just because of those reforms. It clearly shows that defensive medicine is real. I know defensive medicine is real, you know defensive medicine is real, the other OB/GYN in the room knows defensive medicine is real. We practice defensive medicine every day. These researchers out of Stanford University were able to show the incredible cost. This is in 1995 dollars. They extrapolated that it costs health care in our Nation $50 billion a year, and I assume it is now $100 billion a year.

Madam Speaker, the Medicare program could save billions of dollars a year nationwide if we can pass medical malpractice reform. Those are dollars that can best be used to provide prescription drug benefits for seniors and other enhanced benefits, or extend the solvency of the Medicare program. This is a horrible, horrible crisis that we have today that is hurting the taxpayer. It is hurting all Americans. Indeed, this high cost of medical malpractice ends up costing us more money to just provide health care, and that in effect is a drag on our whole economy and it affects our ability to be competitive in the world marketplace.

We must pass this bill. The other body needs to pass this bill. It is good for America, it is good for health care in America, and certainly it would help us in the area I live to be able to keep our trauma center open and operating. I want to thank my good friend from Georgia and my good friend from Texas for their leadership on this very, very important issue.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, I think this is a good, fair rule. It allows an honest debate of the issues. As many of my colleagues know, I am a physician. I still see patients once a month at the veterans clinic in my congressional district, and I practiced medicine for 15 years before I was elected to the House of Representatives. I took care of a lot of patients with paralysis, Parkinson's disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer's disease. I saw firsthand on a daily basis the hardship those people and their families went through.

Indeed, I wanted to share with all my colleagues that my father died of complications of diabetes disease. I had six uncles. When I was growing up as a kid, one of my favorite uncles was my Uncle John. He died of complications of Parkinson's disease. So if there were evidence to support the position being held by some people in this body and some people in the scientific community that there was great potential from therapeutic cloning, I would be the first to admit it. I would be the first person to acknowledge it. I could not deny it because it would be evident in the medical literature. But the fact of the matter is, the evidence is not there.

What we are debating today is the ethical parameters on the whole issue of regenerative medicine. For decades, doctors have had at their disposal surgical techniques to help people and make them well. They have had medications, drugs that they could use to make people well. And in the past 20 years, they have been making use of something called regenerative medicine using what is called stem cells. This bill, contrary to what some people say, does not ban stem cell research. It does not ban embryo stem cell research. It specifically bans the creation of cloned human embryos.

We voted on this very issue. We debated this issue on the floor of this House a year and a half ago. It was July of 2001. The progression of science is something that we need to include in this debate. I went through the medical literature just about the last 12 months; and I have about 88 studies showing adult stem cells in humans and that they have tremendous potential, that they are actually finding application in the treatment of 45 different diseases.

Mr. Speaker, I wish I could produce a study that shows that therapeutic cloning in humans has potential, but there is not even one study. Indeed, I wish I could introduce a study that shows that therapeutic cloning in animals has potential; but, likewise, there is not a single study even in animals. It has been tried in mice, and it has not worked. Therapeutic cloning has never been done.

We are debating here on the floor of the House therapeutic cloning as though therapeutic cloning exists, as though it is around the corner. Let us get realistic here. People are going to come to the floor, and they are going to suggest that we have to hold out therapeutic cloning because it is the only hope for these people. We are funding NIH $27 billion a year. We have thousands of researchers all over the Nation doing all kinds of research using all kinds of modalities, surgeries, therapies, medications; and this regenerative medicine issue is one little slice of what researchers are exploring to help these people with these conditions. We are essentially debating a subsegment of that. And some people will come down here and hold that up as though it is the only thing out there.

Let us get realistic. It has never been done. They tried it in mice, and it was published in ``Cell.'' For those who do not read the scientific literature, this is one of the most prestigious journals that cell biologists read. I will quote from the study. It says: ``Our results raise the provocative possibility that even genetically matched cells derived by therapeutic cloning may still face barriers to effective transplantation for some disorders.'' They tried therapeutic cloning in a mouse model of disease and it failed dismally. So not only can we not produce a study that shows that it works, we can produce studies that show that it does not work.

I think the time has arrived for us to do the right thing. This is a moral and ethical decision. We are talking about scientists creating human embryos for the purpose of exploiting them and destroying them, and there is no scientific evidence today that this is justifiable.

Mr. Speaker, I will include for the Record the studies I referred to above.

Parliamentary Inquiry

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I want to commend him for his leadership on this very, very important and critical issue.

As I mentioned in the debate on the rule, the science on so-called therapeutic cloning is going nowhere, so

why do all of these scientists say that they want to allow embryo cloning? Why do all of these biotechnology companies say they want to allow embryo cloning, even though the chairman of Geron, Thomas Okarma, is quoted on the issue of therapeutic cloning, and he is quoted as saying, ``The odds favoring success are vanishingly small, and the costs are daunting. It would take thousands of human eggs on an assembly line to produce a custom therapy for a single person.''

He goes on to say, ``This process is a nonstarter.''

So if this therapeutic cloning is such a nonstarter as Okarma says, why do the people in the biotech industries, why do all of these scientists say we have to allow this, we have to make this legal? What is the rationale behind all of this?

I will tell my colleagues what they want to do. They want to create human models of disease. Research scientists today in America, if they want to do research on Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, diabetes, they buy mice and they buy rats that have been engineered to manifest that disease, and what they want to do is they want to create human beings that are engineered to manifest these diseases.

Now, can we imagine that? They want to have shelves with diseases on them filled with human embryos and sell them for a profit to research labs, and that is where we are going with this issue.

Some people get up and ridicule this concept of a slippery slope, but that is exactly what we are on. Because I will tell my colleagues what is next. The artificial womb technology is there. It is available to us today. One can take these embryos and put them in these baths and one can grow them well beyond the embryonic stage, and that will be the next thing we will be debating and talking about in this Chamber if the positions held by some people who want to allow embryo cloning are allowed to move forward.

These are the same exact arguments that occurred in this House on fetal tissue research 10 years ago; and people got up and claimed, we have to allow this, it is the great potential of the future. It turned out to be an absolute bust. It was a disaster. It went absolutely nowhere. Therapeutic cloning is going nowhere. It has been a year and a half since we originally debated this issue. I placed a mountain of evidence before this body here showing that the adult stem cells are working out great, the embryo stem cells are going nowhere, the cloned stem cells are going absolutely nowhere. So why are we still here? Why are we debating this issue? It is because there are people who want to create human models of disease that they can sell for a profit. It is an abomination.

Vote for this bill. Vote against the substitute.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time, and I again want to commend him for his work in this area and his eloquent statements on the floor.

I rise in very strong opposition to this substitute, and I encourage all my colleagues to vote against it and to vote in favor of the underlying bill.

Let me address, first out, one of the issues that seems to be implied by some of the discussion that I have heard so far, and that is, these embryos that are created through somatic cell nuclear transfer process are somehow not embryos or they are cells or they are cheek cells or they are stem cells. I am a scientist, a doctor. I am not an expert in this area, but I know a fair amount about it. I did research in molecular genetics as an undergraduate. I am a physician.

When a person does somatic cell nuclear transfer they are creating a human embryo. Indeed, President Clinton's Bioethics Council has said that, and President Bush's Bioethics Council has said that, a human embryo resulting from the nuclear transfer process is a human embryo. It is contrasted from a human embryo created by sexual reproduction, which is a unique embryo; whereas when we create a human embryo through somatic cell nuclear transfer, we are essentially creating an identical duplicate or twin.

So let us do away with that issue here and now. This is very, very clearly a human embryo. That is what the gentleman from Pennsylvania wants to allow to be created for research purposes. What will happen if we do that? What will happen if we go down that route?

I contend that a lot of things will happen that I think are very, very concerning. Number one, we are going to have a lot of research labs that will need eggs. Where will they get the eggs? They will have to get them from women. How do we get eggs from women? Well, we give them drugs that cause a phenomenon called superovulation. We have to do periodic ultrasounds to make sure they do not develop ovarian cysts, and they can get depression from those drugs; and then once the eggs are ripe, we have to give the woman a general anesthetic to harvest the eggs. And we will have these research labs that are going to need these large quantities of eggs, and this is why these biotech executives say this is a nonstarter in terms of developing so-called therapeutic cloning. The logistics of this are just unimaginable of how we would execute something like this.

One important thing I want to say, if we have all of these labs generating these eggs, we are going to have unscrupulous physicians implanting one of these in a woman, and we are going to usher in the very thing that the gentleman from Pennsylvania and the gentleman from Florida say they are against. They say they are against reproductive cloning, but our own Justice Department says there will be no way to police this. We will have all of these embryos in all of these labs, and the only way to prevent it is to stop it from the very, very beginning.

Might I also just reiterate, adult stem cell research is moving along very nicely. We have heard some very impassioned comments about Parkinson's disease. I want to quote from Dennis Turner, who had his Parkinson's disease treated successfully with adult stem cells. We cannot even produce one research study in a rat where we can cure Parkinson's disease with embryo stem cells or cloned stem cells. But I have got a real live human being here. He says, they were not fetal cells, they were my cells, so I would not have to take any anti- rejection medications the rest of my life. Dennis Turner previously could not even hold a newspaper, and now he is hardly on any medication at all. The adult stem cells are working great.

I say to my colleagues this alternative, this substitute, is unnecessary and unethical. We do not want to go down the path of creating human life for the purpose of exploiting it in the lab and then destroying it.

Vote no on this substitute. Vote yes on the underlying bill.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I want to get at this issue of eggs and how are you going to get them. The gentleman from Pennsylvania has implied that my concerns about women's donation are unfounded. Let me just underscore from the start that there are a lot of people on the left that have a lot of concern about this issue. One of the first people who came into my office to join forces with me on preparing this legislation was Judy Norsigian. She is pro-choice. She helped write the Boston Women's Health Cooperative book, ``Our Bodies, Ourselves.''

Indeed, I think some of the concern about this issue is why I think seven Democrats, seven or eight Democrats with a perfect voting record with NARAL, supported my bill in the 107th Congress and it is over this concern. The gentleman from Pennsylvania implied it's ridiculous, women aren't going to be lining up. The issue is essentially this. If you are going to start doing a lot of this experimentation, you are going to need a lot of eggs because not every egg you put the nucleus in and then zap it with electricity begins to divide and form an embryo. There is a fairly high failure rate if you

actually read the research articles, which I have done. There is a pretty high failure rate. So you are going to need lots of eggs to create a few embryos and you are going to need a lot of women to get a lot of eggs.

And who will donate their eggs? Well, it is going to be women who will do it for money. It is a painful procedure. Women do this right now. The fertility clinics frequently deal with women who are older and their eggs are not very viable and so they pay typically coeds to donate some of their eggs so that some of these older women can actually have a baby. It is already going on today. But it is going on today on a very limited level and it is going on today for what I think is an ethically and morally appropriate purpose: somebody wants to have a baby, somebody struggling with infertility. But now we are going to be talking about creating these eggs for this research.

The research, Mr. Chairman, is going nowhere. I have read the reports. It is not going to ever lead to any cures. The reason the biotech industry wants the Greenwood amendment to prevail and does not want my position to prevail is because they want to create human models of disease so that we can get away from using rats and mice as our models for disease. To me, this is a huge issue. You are talking about creating human embryos, modifying them genetically to preprogram them with diseases, and then selling them for a profit by the biotech industry.

I said before, it is an abomination. If you do not think that is an abomination, I do not know what you think is. To me it is absolutely ghastly.

Let me just close by again saying all of this research can proceed with animal models unfettered under the provisions of the bill that the chairman has brought to the floor. You can continue with animal research. You can clone DNA. You can clone animals. You can clone cells. You just cannot create a human embryo under the provision of this legislation. I think it is the right thing to do. I think that morally it is the correct thing to do. I would again encourage all of my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this substitute and vote ``yes'' on the underlying bill.

I want to commend the gentleman from Wisconsin for his very eloquent remarks.

Mr. Chairman, I again thank the chairman for his work in this area, and I thank him for yielding me this time.

The Greenwood substitute purports to be a ban on human cloning. It is a moratorium on human cloning. It is a 10-year prohibition that sunsets; and it allows unfettered, essentially, the creation of human embryos in the lab for the purpose of research; and then it requires their destruction, essentially, through a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer or human cloning.

We have never gone in this direction before where we are actually talking about creating human embryos in the lab for exploiting them and destroying them. There have been a few labs in different places in the country that have tried to do this. One successfully. There are fertility clinics that have so-called excess embryos, and some of them have made those embryos available for stem cell research. This bill does not affect that. That would be permissible to move forward.

The question before us is, is the Greenwood substitute a real ban on human cloning? I contend it is not. It would still allow the creation of clones in the lab in embryonic form, and I believe very strongly that it will usher in what the supporters of the substitute claim that they do not want to see and that is reproductive cloning, because we will have all of these labs generating these embryos and eventually one of them or more will find its way into unscrupulous hands, will be implanted, and will result in reproductive cloning.

Might I also add that there are some people who want to allow this research to move forward so that they can some day be able to do reproductive cloning. At a hearing we had on this issue, I had Dr. Brian Cohen testify before the committee, and he repeatedly said, ``We are opposed to reproductive cloning at this time.'' He kept saying ``at this time.'' And I finally asked him, ``What do you mean by 'at this time'?'' And he is the executive director, or the president, of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine; and then he went on to basically say that if they can work through all of the problems with cloning that they would some day like to be able to do it. And what will happen, what will be next with that? I contend that the age of eugenics will have arrived. There will be people who will then want to manipulate these embryos for the purpose of creating a human with preintended specifications, specifying size, height, weight, athletic performance, intellectual capabilities; and it will open a Pandora's box of frightful potentialities that I feel that we as a civilization do not want to open up, and therefore I strongly encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote against the substitute and vote ``yes'' on the underlying bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to address the House regarding the very important issue of human cloning.

The question before our Nation is are we going to allow human cloning in the United States of America or are we going to ban human cloning?

In the 107th Congress, I introduced legislation, the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001. This legislation ultimately was reviewed and passed approvingly after hearings by the Committee on the Judiciary and was brought to the floor of the House and received a favorable vote in the House of Representatives passing by a margin of 265 for, 162 against.

Of note in that vote there were some 63 Democrats who voted in support of this legislation to ban all forms of human cloning. And I would point out that many of the Democrats who voted in support of banning human cloning were pro-choice.

There are many people who have tried to define this debate about human cloning as liberal/conservative. They have tried to define it as a pro-life/pro-abortion rights kind of debate; but in reality the debate on human cloning transcends some of those traditional divisions that separate the political parties and factions within the House of Representatives and within our Nation.

Unfortunately, the legislation to ban all forms of human cloning that passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives 2 years ago, almost 2 years ago now, it was never taken up by the Senate. The Senate never held a vote on the issue. Therefore, the issue was essentially left open; and, indeed, many Americans are shocked and surprised to learn today that there is no law on the books in the United States of America to ban human cloning. Indeed, many foreign countries have already moved, they have already acted to ban human cloning. Several European countries have banned it outright, like Germany, for example. Norway has banned it completely. The European Parliament has called for a complete ban on human cloning. The French Senate very recently voted to ban all forms of human cloning. So clearly there is a tide sweeping the globe that says, no, we are not going to move away from human pro- creation to baby manufacturing, which is really what this debate is all about in its essence.

Due to the failure of the Senate, or the other body, to act on this issue, I reintroduced my legislation along with my colleague from Michigan (Mr. Stupak). Our bill is H.R. 534, the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2003. And I would like to talk a little bit about what the legislation is and what it does, and I have a few visuals to help with this debate.

First of all, I would like to start out with what is human cloning. In normal sexual reproduction, the sperm and the egg unite to form a single-cell embryo, and that single-cell embryo rapidly begins a process of dividing to form this multicell embryo. And, of course, from there it develops further into the fetal stage of development forming a baby and ultimately a human being like you and I.

In human cloning we have a procedure called somatic cell nuclear transfer, and what happens here is you take a human egg and you either deactivate the nucleus in the egg or you remove it, and there are two different approaches to that. And you essentially end up with an egg that has no nuclear material in it. In a normal human egg, the normal cells in our bodies have 46 chromosomes; but in the egg there are 23 chromosomes and in the sperm there are 23, and they come together to form a new unique human being with 46 chromosomes.

So in the process of cloning, you either deactivate this nucleus or you eject it out. So you end up with an enucleated egg. And then you take a cell from somebody's body, and in this depiction this has the appearance of a skin cell and you extract the nucleus out of that cell, and you place it inside the egg. And this is why it is called nuclear transfer. It is called somatic cell nuclear transfer because the cells in our bodies are called somatic cells or body cells. Somatic means body. And then what happens next is typically they zap this egg with a little bit of electricity, and lo and behold it begins to divide and form an embryo.

This, of course, is the first mammal that was ever cloned. The first species that was cloned, I believe, it occurred in the 1950s. It was a carrot. But this creation of Dolly the sheep was the first example of a mammal being cloned. Prior to cloning Dolly, there had been some other vertebrates that were cloned, but Dolly was the first mammal. And, of course, we as humans are mammals. And the reason this created so much news is because Dolly a sheep, a mammal very similar to us, and what they did there was they took an udder, cell which is essentially a mammary duct cell, and they took the nucleus out of it from the donor sheep, and then they took another sheep and they took an egg from that sheep and removed the nucleus. And so they did the nuclear transfer technology, and so they had the DNA of this sheep in the egg from this sheep. They zapped it with electricity. They got it to grow in culture, and then they transplanted it into another female sheep. And this is, of course, the surrogate mother and Dolly was created.

And here is Dolly depicted here. This sheep is a genetic duplicate of this sheep, the one that you took the nucleus out of. This sheep can be construed as the twin or this one can be construed as the twin of this sheep.

Now, it is worth noting that Dolly was born on July 5, 1996. Almost immediately Dolly began to show signs of premature aging. Indeed, the researchers who have studied all the cloned mammals that have been cloned so far, pigs, goats, mice, they all show genetic defects in all of them.

Dolly manifested early arthritis; and, of course, she had to be euthanized, or put to sleep, recently because of the development of further medical conditions. She essentially experienced half the normal life expectancy of a normal sheep. And this is one of the principle issues why many people feel that to do cloning in humans, as some people are proposing, is morally and ethically reprehensible.

It took 237 attempts to create Dolly with many miscarriages, many sheep being born with very, very severe birth defects. So if we try to do this with humans, the question, of course, becomes how many humans will be born, how many babies will be born with birth defects? How will we take care of them? Who will be responsible for them?

One of the most disturbing things about all this is if we were able to overcome those immediate birth-related problems, what would the life of a person who was cloned be like? Would they manifest premature aging? Would they ultimately succumb to diseases at an early age? This is clearly experimentation of the absolute worst and most reprehensible kind, and there is general agreement that we should outlaw cloning specifically of this type, referred to as reproductive cloning.

What this House will engage in a tremendous amount of debate on over the next few days is the issue of whether or not we should allow something called therapeutic cloning or the creation of cloned embryos in the lab. I anticipate that there will be a substitute for my legislation being offered by the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Greenwood). His legislation contends that it is best to simply outlaw the creation of a human being but to allow the unfettered creation of human embryos in the lab to be exploited for research purposes because of the supposed great potential of these to lead to cures to many diseases.

I know there are a lot of people who have some questions about this issue, and I would be very happy to yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Renzi), a distinguished freshman from the Flagstaff area. I understand he had some questions for me about this issue.

I would be happy to do that.

Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to respond to his question. This is a very, very important issue, and it gets essentially to the crux of the debate we are going to have here on the floor of this body on Thursday when H.R. 534 comes up for discussion, debate, and consideration and vote, and I want to just point out one very very important thing about this.

They are trying to call embryo cloning somatic cell nuclear transfer, and the reason they are trying to do that, scientifically that is what it is, but the overwhelming majority of Americans are opposed to all forms of human cloning. It is something like 65, 70, 80 percent of the American people are against all forms of human cloning, and so they are trying to put a pretty face on it so they are calling it somatic cell nuclear transfer.

The important point I want to raise I think was stated very nicely by the President's National Bioethics Advisory Commission back in 1997, and they said the commission began its discussion fully recognizing that any efforts in humans to transfer a somatic cell nucleus into an enucleated egg involves the creation of an embryo with the apparent potential to be planted in utero and developed to term.

So what they are saying here is this is cloning. So they may want to call it somatic cell nuclear transfer but it is definitely cloning.

They go on to say this is not science fiction you see in movies, but rather a reasonable and appropriate way to alleviate the horrors faced by patients suffering from deadly painful diseases. This kind of language in my opinion is reprehensible. There is no basis in science to make a claim like this, and I have been saying this over and over again. I would be very, very happy to debate these people who go around making these claims.

Therapeutic cloning has never been done. It is going to be debated here as though it is a scientific fact. It is a scientific fiction. It has never been demonstrated in humans. What is more, it has never even been demonstrated in an animal model. We purchase from research labs these animals that are genetically programmed to develop diabetes. We cannot take this technology and use it to even cure an animal. The advocates for embryo cloning do not have even one, one, example of where in an animal model they can cure disease; and for them to go so far as to say this has the potential to alleviate the horrors faced by patients suffering from deadly diseases, I think it is a horror that they would make such a grossly exaggerated and false statement, because it raises the false hopes of millions of Americans who suffer from these diseases. There is no scientific evidence that this has the potential to be effective at this time.

I apologize, this is a very, very long answer to the gentleman's question. But my legislation to ban cloning does not prohibit animal cloning, and it does not prohibit animal embryo cloning, and so the advocates for this will have unfettered ability to demonstrate that this works in animal models, and if they can demonstrate that it works in animal models, they can come back to the Congress and say we really feel very strongly that you need to allow this to move forward in human models, the Congress has the ability to reverse the law. But that is a grossly exaggerated claim.

I understand the gentleman wanted to ask me some more questions in a colloquy.

I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.

This is a very confusing quote because it really mixes two issues. It starts out saying cloning is a widely used, vital medical tool that has allowed scientists and researchers to develop powerful new drugs. What they are talking about is we have been cloning tissues in the labs for years, we have been cloning animals in the labs for years, we have been cloning DNA in the lab, and some of these cloning technologies are finding their way into the research and development arenas that are used for development of new drugs, produce insulin, useful bacteria in the lab. And so those statements are true.

But my bill does not ban those things. This group, CAMR, or the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, they are against my bill; but in that response they fail to point out that my bill does not ban all of that animal cloning and all of that DNA cloning, all that stuff that is going on.

What it specifically only bans is human cloning, an attempt to create a human embryo in the lab, and they seem to imply in the first sentence of that quote the gentleman just read that it is a vital medical tool. Those applications that would be permissible under my legislation are certainly vital, and they will proceed unfettered,

but human cloning is not a vital medical tool. There is not one research article where human cloning has been used to treat anybody of anything.

Might I also add, the crux of this debate is the whole issue of regenerative medicine and if a person gets sick, the traditional tools used by physicians are surgery and medications to make a person well; and of course there is therapy and there are lots of other modalities to make people well. But an additional tool is this concept of regenerative medicine where we take cells and put cells in a person's body and those cells make a person better, and adults themselves have actually been used in 45 human clinical trials to make people well.

Embryonic stem cells have never been used in a single clinical trial to ever make anybody well. Embryo stem cells have never been used in an animal model to heal an animal. There have been a couple of studies that seem to suggest that embryo stem cells might have some potential at some point in the future, but they do not have a model where we can take an animal with disease and make it well, and that is what they are trying to imply by this response.

Again, it is a very deceptive response, and I apologize for these lengthy responses to the gentleman's inquiries. These issues are just very, very complicated science, and it is very hard to do them justice by just giving 8-second sound-bite responses to the questions.

That is absolutely correct. The National Academy of Sciences panel made that recommendation, but then they acknowledged there were no bioethicists on the panel, and then they went on further to state that others should debate the ethics of this. There were no bioethicists. There were no theologians. There were no elected representatives from the people, no representatives from the community. And they wisely said that others should debate the morality and the ethics of this issue; and frankly, they wisely said that because the path that they are recommending that we allow the creation of human life in the lab for research purposes and then those human embryos are to be destroyed is an entirely new path for us to walk down.

Historically in our Nation we have always stood up for protecting life. The recent historical departure from that, Roe v. Wade, that decision was rendered in the context, at least my understanding of the interpretation of the decision of the court was not that the baby developing inside the woman is not alive and not that it is not human and not that it is a commodity that can just be manipulated and discarded, but that the right of reproductive freedom or privacy of the mother trumped the right to life of the baby, a decision I do not particularly agree with.

But now we are talking about going in a whole new direction. We are talking about creating life expressly for the purpose of exploiting it and destroying it. A parallel would be for a woman to deliberately try to get pregnant so she could have an abortion. Clearly this is a moral and ethical quagmire that I do not think we should walk down as a Nation.

I will just cite for you one example of where this would lead us if we allow therapeutic cloning or embryo cloning. The artificial womb is available to us today. You can take a mammalian embryo and drop it in the artificial womb, and it will pass from the embryonic stage into the fetal stage of development and can survive up to 30 days of development. That will be the next place these researchers will want to go to. Who on Earth would want to extract stem cells from an embryo and try to grow those embryo stem cells into, let us say you want heart tissue. Why would you want to go through the ordeal of in a petri dish trying to grow those cells into heart tissue when you could just much more cheaply and easily place that embryo into an artificial womb and then come back 2 weeks or 3 weeks later and get the tissue you want out of it? That is the slippery slope we are going down. So it is a moral and ethical minefield that I think we as a Nation should not enter into, and we should ban all forms of human cloning.

Actually, I do not know if the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Greenwood) is going to change his language before it comes to the floor, but the language as I last saw it, it is not actually a ban. It is a moratorium. It is a 10-year moratorium on reproductive cloning, taking the cloned embryo and putting it in the uterus of a surrogate mother for the purpose of creating a child. It is a 10-year moratorium. It essentially is saying we do not think this is something we want to allow for the next 10 years, but in 10 years we may want to allow reproductive cloning. So I do not think it is a true ban.

The other point I want to mention, and I have debated my good friend, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, on this issue many times in the past, a reproductive-only ban is very, very difficult to enforce. Indeed, I have a quote from the Justice Department I am going to put up on the easel here in a minute where they state categorically it is going to be very, very hard to enforce. If you allow research cloning to proliferate all over the country, you are going to have dozens of labs producing human embryos for experimental research purposes. It would be very, very easy for an unscrupulous, dishonest physician to do this. I am a physician and I know as a fact that not every physician is an honest person. The medical profession draws its ranks from the human race and there are people who do bad things even within the medical profession.

It will be very easy for an unscrupulous physician to implant one of those human embryos into a woman in the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship, and it would be impossible for our Justice Department to police such a thing and prevent it from happening. Indeed, if a physician did that and a baby were to develop, what could the government do at that point? They certainly would not mandate an abortion on a woman like that. And so I feel very, very strongly that the Feinstein-Hatch-type approach in the other body or the Greenwood approach would actually help usher in reproductive cloning, the very thing that they say they want to prohibit.

Here again what they are trying to do is change the terminology. They have been losing the debate on this issue with the hearts and minds of the American people, so they are now trying to call it somatic cell nuclear transfer rather than embryo cloning or therapeutic cloning. When they called it those things, people understood exactly what it is. But when they say somatic cell nuclear transfer, suddenly people do not know what they are talking about and they may be able to get this thing through.

Clearly as a scientist, as a physician, I can tell you that you are talking about creating human embryos, there is no two ways around it, with the potential to develop into a human being. That is not only my opinion; it is the opinion of the Bioethics Advisory Commission. The same commission has a number of members who feel that therapeutic cloning or embryo cloning should be permissible, but they readily recognize that as soon as you take a somatic cell nucleus and put it in an enucleated egg, it involves the creation of an embryo with the apparent potential to be implanted in a uterus and developed to term. It is the procedure used to create Dolly. So to try to say it is not, I think, is misleading. The facts are the facts.

The gentleman raises an absolutely important point. That is, the debates that they are bringing up here were the same exact debates 10 years ago on fetal tissue research. One of the amazing aspects of all this is Senator Hatch was one of the people who led the charge against fetal tissue research in the other body 10 years ago, and now today he is leading the charge to allow embryo cloning, which is a great irony for me. As I mentioned to you before, there is no basis in science to make a claim like that. I find it very reprehensible for them to hold out hopes to millions and millions of Americans that this is going to be the cure for their condition. I will simply just point out, if that were the case, if this statement were true, you would go into the research labs at Harvard and Yale and UCLA and all the prestigious medical schools throughout the Nation and I would expect all the research scientists to be working on cloning, but in point of fact they are not. The reason they are not is because this is a bogus, absurd statement. There is no evidence in science that substantiates a claim like this, that you are going to be able to cure all these millions of Americans of all of these diseases.

I will just simply point out a very important point that they fail to mention. If that were the case, where would you get all the eggs to do all this? It took dozens and dozens of eggs to create Dolly. If you come down with one of these diseases they describe here, we cannot necessarily cure you with one egg. We might need a dozen eggs to get one good clone of you that might develop into an embryo. By the way, this is all science fiction, this is not real; but this is what they are claiming. You would literally need billions of eggs. Who is going to donate all these eggs? To get the eggs, to get a woman's egg, you have to give a woman powerful drugs that cause a phenomenon called superovulation, so instead of one egg developing you get a dozen eggs developing. The drugs have side effects. Thirty percent of women who take those drugs develop depression. You have to give them these powerful drugs, and then you have to give them a general anesthetic and do a surgical procedure to harvest the eggs. This is not some simple, minor procedure that you can have done in a medical office in 30 seconds. You are talking about an ordeal for a woman to donate her eggs. And for them to make the absurd notion that you are going to cure 100 million Americans with this, you would literally need 1 billion eggs.

Mind you, they do not have one, one example where they can do one of these things in an animal model. Not one. I have challenged some of the most prestigious scientists in the world with this question. Show me one, one article where you can do this in a human. None. I say show me one article, one research article, a peer-reviewed journal article where you can do this in an animal model. None. They have absolutely none. But they make these bald-faced, absurd assertions that they are going to cure 100 million people with all these conditions. I think it is shameful that they would seriously consider this.

I very much appreciate the opportunity to engage in this colloquy with the gentleman.

I thank the gentleman. It has certainly been a pleasure to engage in this colloquy. I would be very happy to recognize the gentlewoman from Colorado and yield to her if she would like to say a few words about this very important issue.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman, and those were very well taken points. This is clearly a line in the sand. It is a demarcation point; and if we go across that line, if we say we are going to start creating human lives for the purpose of exploiting them for scientific research and then discarding them, where does that take us next? What comes around the corner? I have been arguing for years that it will usher in reproductive cloning.

Indeed, in testimony that we received in my committee, we had a Dr. Cohen, Brian Cohen, who represented the American Society of Reproductive Medicine; and in his testimony he repeatedly said ``We are opposed to reproductive cloning at this time,'' and he said it twice. Finally I asked him, ``Why did you say `We are opposed to reproductive cloning at this time'?'' And this fellow represents the Association of Fertility Experts in the United

States, and essentially his response to me was that once all the science is worked out on this where it can be done safely, they want to be able to do it. They want to be able to clone human beings. And this is the brave new world, no longer confined to fiction literature, but it has essentially arrived because the follow-ons to this will be genetic manipulation, genetic enhancements. Eugenetics is what it is called, an attempt to try to eliminate undesirable traits in our culture and our society. So people will begin to not only select the gender of their desired offspring, but they may actually want to manipulate the genetic code of their offspring so they can get a specific height or size or physical appearance or IQ. I would imagine athletic performance will be one of the things that they will go after.

And this is the Pandora's box of issues that we are opening up if we allow human cloning to occur in the United States. Therapeutic cloning, embryo cloning or reproductive cloning, it is the path we are going down. And I just want to underscore the importance of us banning all forms of human cloning, which is what we are able to do in the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2003, and I just want to again underscore that there are people who are going to try to put lipstick on the pig. They are going to try to say that this is not cloning; and they are going to call it somatic cell nuclear transfer, or they are going to try to call it nuclear transfer technologies; and we are going to hear this kind of language being used both in this body and the other body. It is cloning. It is creating human embryos through the process of cloning. And people need to remember that no matter what they call it, that is what it is.

I just want to underscore additionally that this is not purely a pro- life issue. Cloning of all types, therapeutic, embryonic, and reproductive cloning, has been made illegal in Germany by the leadership of the Green Party, which is pro-choice. Indeed, in the vote that we had passing my bill in the 107th Congress, I had seven or eight people voting for the legislation who had a 100 percent voting record with the National Abortion Rights Action League.

And so clearly this is not an abortion debate. It is different from that. There are a lot of people who are pro-life like myself who have a very strong moral and ethical objection to cloning on the basis of simply creating human life in the lab to be exploited and destroyed, a so-called utilitarian approach. But there are many people on the left who are strongly opposed to cloning because of their concern about eugenics, because of their concern about the impact this could have on the disability community, and very importantly there are a lot of people who are very concerned about the exploitation of women. If we are going to have in this country dozens of labs creating hundreds of human embryos every year for the purpose of doing research, where are we going to get those eggs from? Who is going to donate their eggs? Who will submit themselves to this kind of research? I will say who I think it will be. It will probably be poor women. It will probably be predominantly women of color.

Indeed, I want to read this quote from Judy Norsigian. She is the co- author of ``Our Bodies, Ourselves for the New Century,'' the Boston Women's Health Collective book, hardly a right wing group. What does she say? ``Because embryo cloning will compromise women's health, turn their eggs and wombs into commodities, compromise their reproductive autonomy, and with virtual certainty lead to the production of experimental human beings, we are convinced that the line must be drawn here.'' And I was very encouraged by this latter part of her quote. She is not only concerned about women being exploited, but she has a concern about the dignity, the human dignity, and the indignity of this to be creating human beings for experimental research purposes and then to be discarded.

If research cloning is allowed to proceed in this country, or therapeutic cloning unfettered, in my opinion what ultimately will happen, because it will be so expensive to get these eggs from women in the United States because they will have to pay women thousands of dollars to undergo the procedure, because of the fairly high incidence of depression in women who take these superovulatory drugs, we may have women requiring hospitalization following the egg donation procedure or maybe even going so far as attempting suicide, what I think they will end up doing is they will end up going to third world countries. They will end up going to Central America, South America, away from the trial attorneys in the United States that can lead to lawsuits, away from the prying eyes of the American press and where they can pay women peanuts in order to get their eggs; and that I think is one of the concerns of people like Judy Norsigian. She knows that ultimately the potential exists for women to be exploited, and that is just shameful that it would happen when there is no evidence that this could even work in animals. Indeed, the evidence, there was just recently an article in the mouse model where they tried to do therapeutic cloning and it did not work.

The other thing I want to just share is this quote from Daniel Bryant, who is the Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legislative Affairs. He says ``enforcing a modified cloning ban would be problematic and pose certain law enforcement challenges that would be lessened with an outright ban on human cloning. Anything short of an outright ban would present other difficulties to law enforcement. And what he is talking about here is if we take the approach advocated by the form of the legislation being promoted by the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Greenwood) in the House and Senators Hatch and Feinstein in the other body, just a reproductive ban, how will we enforce that? It will be impossible to enforce that. We will have all of these embryos in all of these labs. The Justice Department, police officers cannot monitor these labs regularly to make sure the embryos have been discarded rather than implanted in women. There will be no way to know whether or not reproductive cloning has occurred. So I feel very, very strongly that this is the best way for us to go.

I will also point out that the President has indicated that he wants a complete ban on all forms of human cloning, reproductive and so- called therapeutic cloning. So clearly, the time has arrived. It is critical that we as a Nation do the right thing. I believe the House of Representatives will do the right thing and ban human cloning in all of its forms, both embryonic cloning and so-called reproductive cloning, that all attempts at creating human embryos in the lab will be prohibited. This is an enforceable ban and a lasting ban. The advocates who say that we must allow embryo cloning in the lab because of its great potential to lead to cures of all these diseases, I again issue my challenge, show me the evidence.

Traditionally in this country we always have demonstrated that it works in animals before we attempt it in humans. Show us the evidence in the scientific literature that this works in animals. They cannot. They will not be able to. The reason they cannot is because it cannot be done. It has not been done in human models. Clearly this takes us down a very dangerous and precarious path, creating human life for the purpose of exploiting it and then destroying it. A very dangerous road for us to walk as a Nation. So I would encourage all of my colleagues to vote in support of the ban on human cloning that we will be debating in the House of Representatives.

Mr. Speaker, on January 16, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia and her crew, Commander Rick Husband, Pilot Willie McCool, Specialist Michael Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown, Laurel Clark, and Ilan Ramon, rocketed off launch pad 39 A, the same launch pad which was used to launch Apollo 11, the first manned mission to the Moon. I was there on that day on January 16th. It was a beautiful launch, filled with tremendous excitement and hope for the potential work of the crew of Columbia.

They left on a 16-day research mission, and they were performing research in a number of disciplines, from biological and medical research to physical sciences, Earth sciences and space sciences, as well as product development. In total, an amazing 86 different research experiments were ongoing during this extended shuttle mission.

This required the crew to work 24 hours a day in two different 12- hour-a-day shifts. Their motto for the mission was ``ex orbe scientia'': from orbit, science. Many people are saying that we should abandon research in low-Earth orbit and head straight to Mars, but I can tell my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, as a medical doctor, I can attest to the myriad number of medical problems a crew to Mars may face.

The crew of STS-107 was working hard on a number of experiments to help us understand better and counteract some of the challenges medically and physiologically that a crew would face on an extended voyage such as a trip to Mars. I will just cite a couple of examples of the types of research they were doing.

One of the principal challenges of zero gravity is a decline in bone mass that occurs when we are up in space. It is actually we lose 1 percent of our bone mass each month we are on orbit. If we are to venture out truly into long-duration space missions, such as a trip to Mars, we need to find ways to counteract this bone loss that occurs on orbit.

The crew of STS-107, the Columbia mission that was tragically lost, was trying to understand better the bone loss that occurs in space and things that can be done to counteract it. Needless to say, as a physician, I know full well the tremendous potential that this research could have yielded back on Earth. I took care of many patients who suffered personal tragedies from the consequences of osteoporosis, the same phenomenon that occurs on orbit with our astronauts.

Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, the research experiment was actually done on the astronauts themselves, and so a tremendous amount of knowledge and understanding about the effects of space on bone loss was lost with the crew.

Additional research was being done on the immune system. As we all know, our Nation, our world, has been wracked by new challenges, medical challenges that affect the immune system in humans, and what has been discovered is that the immune system of astronauts on orbit is impaired. Whether it is the stress of rocketing off into space or adaptation to zero G or other features of the unique features of space environment, astronauts on orbit experience a loss of immune function, and the crew of STS-107 was studying this issue as well.

They were studying pharmacokinetics that are changed in space. Pharmacokinetic is the absorption of drugs from our gastrointestinal tract and how they are handled and eliminated by our body, and there are some very, very unique features of the zero G environment that this crew was studying.

Protein turnover in space. We all lose muscle mass as we age. As well, we lose muscle mass in space, and this loss of muscle mass with aging, there may be ways to counteract that, and there may be links to counteracting this muscle mass loss in space and what we

can do here on Earth to help the elderly or people with physical conditions that involved significant muscle mass.

Renal stones, they were doing research in this arena.

The vestibular system which controls our balance, they were doing research on. This is very, very critical for many elderly people who experience difficulties with their balance system and experience falls as they get on in years, and the crew of STS-107 was doing research in this area as well.

Perhaps one of the most promising areas of research for the American people is the work they were doing on cancer research. The work they were doing with prostate cancer specifically involved the bioreactor, and regretfully all of this research was lost.

Mr. Speaker, I conclude by just saying this was a great human tragedy, the loss of this crew. It was a great blow to our space program. It was also a great blow to the advancement of science.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize Crosswinds Youth Services, a nonprofit organization in my congressional district that has served Florida's Space Coast for the past 28 years.

Yesterday, February 10, Crosswinds Youth Services received the prestigious

National Network for Youth Agency of the Year Award, and I am proud to recognize their outstanding achievement.

The National Network for Youth states in its award letter: ``It is truly a great honor that Crosswinds Youth Services this year has been judged to be the best organization in the Nation serving runaway, homeless, and other youth in crisis. This award goes to the best among the best in America. Crosswinds is the first organization in Florida to win this award.''

According to the National Network for Youth, each year in America, 5,000 runaways die from assault, illness, and suicide.

Crosswinds is an extraordinary organization doing extraordinary work. The men and women involved in this organization need to be commended, and I am honored to rise in support of them on this day.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me this time, and I thank him for his leadership on space policy issues.

Today I join with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to honor the crew of Columbia. The names of these brave men and women will now forever be linked to the risks and rewards of exploring the final frontier. They were all extraordinary people.

Commander Rick Husband was a man of strong faith who had dreamed of space travel since his childhood in Amarillo, Texas. He was a family man. He was committed to his community. He set the highest standards for us all.

Pilot William McCool was a man who personified excellence in all that he did. He was from San Diego. Since an early age he had dreamed of flying and following his dream with an unending font of energy and skill. He was highly gifted, but evidently he rarely showed any hubris. In fact, he was described as always humble, something we all could learn from.

Mission Specialist Michael Anderson was from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He loved learning and science, and it was in following his passion for science that led him to NASA and to space flight. He knew his responsibilities as an astronaut and took every opportunity to talk to schoolchildren with excitement and enthusiasm about the value of space exploration.

Mission Specialist Kalpana Chawla lived a uniquely American life. Born and raised in India, she came to America as an immigrant. She worked hard and studied engineering and science. She became an American citizen and from there became an astronaut. She made both the nation of her birth, India, and her adopted country, America, proud of her and her accomplishments.

Mission Specialist David Brown was truly a man for all seasons. He was a physician like myself, a Navy pilot, and a member of the astronaut corps. Everything he set out to do, he accomplished. He had many other goals he was anxious to accomplish after this mission had been completed.

Mission Specialist Laurel Clark, a wife, a mother, a physician, also. She enjoyed scuba diving and flying airplanes. She was aware of that special honor that was hers to fly in space, and she was thankful for it. She was certainly somebody who lived life to the fullest.

The man, of course, who was in many ways of most interest was Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon. He was the first Israeli in space, a national hero in his homeland, a dedicated husband and father, a brave pilot, the son and grandson of Holocaust survivors. He was an inspiration to his nation and to us all.

Commander Husband, on the evening before they launched, shared with his crew and their families his favorite passage from the book of Joshua. I would like to share it with my colleagues today. It reads:

``Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them. Be strong and courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you. Do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Do not let this book of the law depart from your mouth. Meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will prosper and be successful. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.''

As Commander Husband invoked those words of the Bible to encourage his crew to be strong and courageous, we today should take heed of those words. We live in a dangerous world with many challenges facing us. The measure of a truly great nation is one that can face its challenges and excel and lead the world to a higher level. That is why we have NASA and why we must recommit ourselves now more than ever to the dream and adventure of human space flight. The crew of Columbia would want nothing less. It was what they lived for. It was what they died for.

How we decide to respond to this tragedy will be judged very closely by many generations that come after us. We are a nation of explorers. We cannot let future generations down and walk away from our destiny in space. The Columbia Seven crew would best be memorialized by a great, strong, robust commitment to space exploration.

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, I missed two votes on Monday, January 27 due to my attendance at the funeral for Florida State Senator Howard Futch. Had I been present for rollcall votes 13 and 14 I would have voted in favor of both resolutions.