Stem Cell Research

Floor Speech

STEM CELL RESEARCH -- (House of Representatives - April 17, 2007)

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Ms. FOXX. Thank you, Dr. Gingrey, Congressman Gingrey. I appreciate your starting off this hour this evening on this important issue. I also appreciate your having gone to Wake Forest to visit the Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Some of the most important research that is happening in the area of stem cell research is occurring at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University. And I am very proud to represent them here in the Congress.

I am going to talk a little bit about what they are doing, but I want to reiterate some of the things that you have been saying. I got out my file today on this and looked back at my notes, and it was almost 2 years ago that I stood on this floor one evening, a little earlier than this, and spoke for about 40 minutes about the issue of stem cell research. And I have told this story many, many times to people, because many may wonder why we are here speaking sometimes to very few of our colleagues who are here in the Chamber. But I tell this story because it was about 9 o'clock at night, and as I said, I spoke for about 40 minutes. And when I got back to my office, the staffer said to me, you just had a call from a gentleman from Maryland who had never watched C-SPAN before, was channel surfing and saw this woman standing on the floor of the House and wondered how in the world did she get to be on the floor of the House when he thought only Members of Congress could speak on the floor of the House. And I didn't look like I was a Member of Congress, so he stopped the channel surfing and watched and listened to me talk about the issue of stem cell research and called my office and said that he was so grateful for that because he had not understood the issue like I had explained it.

And he wanted to just call and thank me for that. And that has been one of the things that has kept me going and doing these Special Orders at night, thinking that even if we only reach a few people who are watching, it is important to do that, and it is particularly important on this issue.

And I think how you described, Dr. Gingrey, the way the survey question should be asked, explaining to people exactly what is going to happen as a result of the research, is very, very important because we all know you get about whatever results you want to from a survey depending on how you ask the question. But I think describing what stem cell research is, is extremely important, and talking about what is being done. You have presented some facts and figures there already, and I want to do it again. I just think that every time we talk about it, we need to talk about it.

People who are pro-life support stem cell research. I support stem cell research. You do. Every other person here who considers himself or herself a pro-lifer supports stem cell research. But what we want is research that does not require the killing of human life. That is what is important to us. We also know, as you have pointed out, that a lot of money is being spent on embryonic stem cell research. A lot of Federal dollars are being spent on that. And I think, frankly, that we are paying more than our fair share for research that many people find to be morally repugnant.

You gave some statistics. Mine are not long-term statistics. I have the 2006 numbers.

In 2006 NIH spent $38 million on embryonic stem cell research, compared to $200 million on human nonembryonic stem cell research, adult and cord blood research. That is very important research. That is the research that has given us some results in terms of curing disease. We have gotten no positive results from embryonic stem cell research, and that is the point I think that needs to be made over and over again.

And one of the reasons I am very excited about the research that Dr. Atala and his team are doing is because they are doing research that doesn't require the destruction of human life. Dr. Atala, who came to Wake Forest from Harvard and brought a large team, as you said, with him, is a tissue engineering specialist, and he has found that amniotic fluid stem cells have those pluripotent properties that you pointed out earlier and grow as fast as embryonic stem cells. And I know that he talked to you about the research, particularly in growing bladders, that has occurred there and the tremendously positive response that he has gotten.

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Ms. FOXX. Right. Well, thank you again for pointing out more of the scientific evidence that we have. And I think it is very important that a person with your background as an OBGYN physician can understand this issue so well and explain it. I think that all the physicians on our side of the aisle are very strong pro-lifers and are working very hard to get the information out about this issue.

As you point out, those stem cells, those coming from the umbilical cord and those coming from the placenta and the amniotic fluid, have shown tremendous results.

The other thing that the media does not point out and that people who are proposing that we go to embryonic stem cell research with government funding, they don't point out the fact that over 70 diseases have been treated by adult stem cells and zero treatments have come out of embryonic stem cell research, even though embryonic stem cell research just passed the 25-year mark. For over 25 years, scientists have been looking into using embryonic stem cells, and we have really gotten nothing but negative results from that, and we have gotten tremendously positive results from adult stem cell research.

So that is why it is so important that we always distinguish between adult stem cell research and embryonic stem cell research. We must do that when we talk about it. Again, it is like what you have said, pointing out the questionnaires and the surveys, making sure that people get asked the right question and that we describe the issue very, very well. We need very much to educate the American public on this issue so that they won't think that the President is being very arbitrary when he vetoes the bill and that we are not being arbitrary when we uphold that veto, which I hope that we will do. And we need to explain to people the ethical questions that we are dealing with.

As I pointed out in my comments a couple of years ago, and I want to say it again, never in this country have we sanctioned research that would harm other human beings. There was the research done in the 1930s that was wrong. We have condemned it. Since that time we have had very, very strong and ethical programs to protect adults from diseases that would cause them harm and from diseases that would cause them death. And yet people don't see the same problem when they are dealing with embryos, and we have to do that. We must do that. We are crossing an ethical Rubicon when we sanction using embryos for research or creating embryos for this research. I think that it is really going over the line, and we must tell people that, and we must have them understand the long-term implications of that for our society and for the human race. We don't believe in doing that in this country.

I think that we have to be very careful again that we explain we can get better results from doing things ethically than we are going to get from doing things unethically, and we don't start down a slippery slope of treating human beings in the wrong way.

I want to thank you again for coming tonight and starting this discussion on this very, very important issue. I hope there is at least one gentleman out there or one person out there, whether they are in Maryland or some other State, who is watching this for the first time and understanding the issue and the distinction that we are making between doing ethical research on adult stem cells and what most of us consider is unethical research on embryos, which will destroy them; and that we can continue to use funds to support programs like Dr. Tony Atala's research at Wake Forest University and other places where they are seeing excellent results. And if we take that money away, we may be denying the kinds of cures that many people say they want to get; but by ignoring the adult stem cell research victories, we may be slowing up the great results that we could get. And I yield back to you.

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