Sam Brownback

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. I think we can do those things. Yet we continue down this route of division. Why would we do that when in the balance sit patients in this country and around the world who seek our help? I have shown you many pictures of those who have gotten help but need more and are having to travel overseas for these treatments. Let's not force them to do that. Let's stop the politics of division. Let's start working together and have a culture that respects human dignity. We can do that. Reject S. 5. Exhibit 1 72 Current Human Clinical Applications Using Adult Stem Cells (List Updated March 2007) anemias & other blood conditions Sickle cell anemia Sideroblastic anemia Aplastic anemia Red cell aplasia (failure of red blood cell development) Amegakaryocytic thrombocytopenia Thalassemia (genetic [inherited] disorders all of which involve underproduction of hemoglogin) Primary amyloidosis (A disorder of plasma cells) Diamond blackfan anemia Fanconi's anemia Chronic Epstein-Barr infection (similar to Mono)

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I want to give two numbers to my colleagues: 613 and zero--$613 million spent on embryonic stem cell research since 2002 and the number of human treatments we have to show for it, which is zero, 613 to zero. I think those are two important numbers to remember when what we are after is cures, and we have cures to show. We have cures that are working, and we can take the next $613 million and invest it in places that are getting cures, such as adult stem cells, cord blood, and amniotic fluid. Do we want to spend another $613 million and use Federal taxpayer dollars to destroy young human life in the process--an ethical boundary we have not thought wise to cross before? Do we want to cross that boundary and spend more money and still not get results, when we have a proven route we can take? I urge my colleagues to reject and vote against S. 5 on two grounds. No. 1, ethical grounds. Embryonic stem cell research, even if presented in supposedly ethical terms, remains unethical, with the destruction of human life. No. 2, practical grounds. We don't have an infinite budget, and in the stem cell field, we need to put our money into areas where we are getting real results--the adult field--and not divert them to the speculative embryonic stem cell field. Let the private sector or the States do it. If they want to go into these areas, they can do so. Let me discuss ethics. Will we sanction the destruction of nascent human life with Federal taxpayer dollars? That is the central question surrounding S. 5. Those voting for it would say yes. I say no. I respect my colleagues who look at this differently, but those are the facts. No. 2, individuals should be treated with respect, whoever they are, wherever they are located, at whatever age or stage of life they are in. We should avoid prejudices. Each individual has an inalienable right to life. Claims that embryos are merely ``potential life'' are not supported by the science. From biology textbooks, we learn: Although life is a continuous process, fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed. . . . It takes place in the beginning. The embryo is not ``potential life,'' it is human life at that particular stage of development in the life cycle continuum. That is not Sam Brownback; that is biology. The embryo would continue along the life cycle continuum if we were not interfering in its normal development by keeping it in a freezer or destroying it for experiments. With the scientific fact in hand, we evaluate the facts in light of our ethical framework. For instance, we know the human embryo is a human life, so how should we treat it? Human life has immeasurable value--we can all agree on that--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, period. That has happened in human history before. It has always been regretted. Our value is intrinsic. Yes, we want to help and treat people with medical conditions, but we must not trample upon any human to achieve such a good end. Treatments. There remain 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, and $613 million has been invested since 2002 at the Federal level. That doesn't include States, private, and other governments. What we have learned about embryonic stem cells is that these cells form tumors when implanted. The scientific literature abounds with such stories. If you read this article from ``Stem Cells,'' you will find this: The expression of the insulin gene could be demonstrated only when the cells differentiated in vivo into teratomas. Those are tumors. Moving from the ethical to the practical, should we put millions or billions of dollars into speculative research on these tumor-forming embryonic stem cells or should we put our money where we are already getting strong results with adult stem cells? I have this. It is the front page of the research journals on adult and cord blood stem cell research and the successes since 2002. Are there similar files for embryonic stem cells? No, there are none. Adult stem cells have no ethical strings attached. You can get them from an adult without causing the patient harm; you can harvest them from 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 without causing harm to the unborn child. When we started this debate yesterday, we were aware of at least 72 peer-reviewed, real human treatments and applications using adult stem cells. Now, with the breaking news yesterday on juvenile diabetes from Northwestern University in Chicago, worked on in Brazil, we are at 73. Again, there remain no embryonic stem cell applications. I say to my colleagues, remember Jacki Rabon, a lady from Illinois, a constituent of the Senators from Illinois, who has spinal cord injuries. She had to go to Portugal to be treated. Do not divert funds away from successful adult stem cell treatments and force your constituents to go to Portugal at great personal expense. Vote against S. 5 and put the money into adult stem cell research. Remember David Foege. For your constituents who have heart disease, do not divert funds away from successful adult stem cell treatments. Do not force your constituents to go to Bangkok at great personal expense. Vote against S. 5. Remember Dennis Turner. For your constituents with Parkinson's, don't divert funds away from successful adult stem cell treatments. Let us provide these treatments here in America. Vote against S. 5. Remember the 13 diabetes patients whom we learned about yesterday who have gone 3 years insulin-free using a treatment with their own adult stem cells. Don't divert these funds away from this area. Vote against S. 5. Mr. President, the Proverbs tell us that there is a way that seems right to man, but its end is the way of death. That seems right to some people. I respect their opinion and I respect them, but its end is the way of death. Killing young human life harms us as a culture, when we treat human life as property. We have done that, and we don't like the history associated with it. These embryonic stem cells form tumors. Tumors remind me of death. Do we want to go that way, even though it may seem right? These embryos are going to be destroyed, so why not? Somebody on death row is going to be destroyed, so why not? Because they have dignity, and they remain dignified. We should treat them with dignity, as we should here. Vote against S. 5. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWNBACK. I want to introduce to the body, into the discussion, a gentleman I had a chance to meet who came in front of a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Subcommittee--Keone Penn. I have a picture of this young man here. I want to share his story. He was cured of sickle cell anemia. We use that term advisedly, but clearly, cured of sickle cell anemia through cord blood adult stem cell treatment-- cured. I want to do part of this to encourage other people out there who might by chance be listening or know somebody else who has sickle cell anemia who has not yet been able to get treated; to talk about cures using cord blood. We have cord blood banking. That is taking place. Cord blood is the blood between the mother and the child when the child is in the womb, and the use of it, which we have now banked--10,000 units roughly have been banked and used throughout the country for many types of illnesses and sicknesses. I want to talk about curing sickle cell anemia in some cases using cord blood. Sickle cell anemia is a disease that afflicts more than 70,000 Americans and a disproportionate number of African Americans. Keone tells the story the best so I will just highlight what he stated in front of a Senate science subcommittee hearing that I chaired. He said: My name is Keone Penn. Two days ago I turned 17 years old. Five years ago they said I wouldn't live to be 17. They said I'd be dead within 5 years. I was born with sickle cell anemia. Sickle cell is a very bad disease. I had a stroke when I was 5 years old. Things got even worse after that. My life has been full of pain, crises, blood transfusions every 2 weeks, and more times in the hospital than I can count. The year before I had my stem cell transplant I was in the hospital 13 times. I never was able to have a normal life. My stem cell transplant was not easy, but I thank God that I'm still here. I will graduate from high school and I want to become a chef because I love to cook. I think I'm pretty good at it. Sickle cell is now a part of my past. One year after my transplant I was pronounced cured. Stem cells saved my life. Many have heard of Keone's amazing story on previous occasions, and the effectiveness of cord blood stem cell research for such diseases rightly gives hope to millions. Keone's story is yet another of a great litany of adult stem cell successes. I want to focus now on the cord blood stem cell successes and why we should not be directing research dollars down other paths, such as embryonic stem cell and human cloning that have not produced these sorts of cures or these sorts of treatments, when we could do a lot more with treatments in the cord blood field. As I noted, we started a cord blood banking program. We now have cord blood banking taking place in several places. I hope people are doing more of this across the country. As I stated, we have distributed nearly 10,000 units of this to get to matches in various places, in various individuals across the country. We need more cord blood donated because you have to match a series of six factors and at least four of those factors must match to be able to use the cord blood in a particular individual such as Keone. Therefore, you need to have a broad cross-section of cord blood in the banking supply so people can possibly find a match. In many places it has been used as a substitute for bone marrow and the difficult collection process that takes place sometimes with marrow. We need more in the cord blood field so we can get more people treated like Keone Penn. I think that is a key avenue for us, in stem cell work, in producing the results. Next step, the next field we need to go to is amniotic fluid. I want to show this to my colleagues. Some of them would have seen this issue. We started a cord blood banking program to get this, so we could get more matches across the country and could get a broader cross-section of individuals who have contributed from various types of blood so we could get matches. The next area we need to bank in, I believe, is amniotic fluid. The fluid that surrounds the child as the child is in the womb is also a rich source of stem cells. It would be my hope that in this year's appropriations bill we would not only study, I hope we will begin the collection and funding of collecting amniotic fluid. Now I urge my colleagues on all sides of this issue to say: Here is another one we can agree upon in moving forward in the stem cell field. I wanted to cite to this, because it is an exciting breakthrough of news. This article appeared in JAMA, Journal of American Medical Association, February 28 of this year, on amniotic fluid. Amniotic fluid-derived stem cells can be coaxed to become muscle, bone, fat, blood vessels, nerves, and liver cells. It might be capable of repairing damaged tissue resulting from conditions such as spinal cord injuries, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, and stroke. My reason for pointing this out is this is one we can agree upon. This is one we can move forward with. The amniotic fluid is discarded after the pregnancy, is not collected. It can be collected. It could be collected. We should see about collecting this and move forward on these treatments, and some of the $613 million we spent on embryonic stem cell research could go into this field, and likely you are going to be producing results very quickly. If the amniotic fluid some people are talking about, as well as the placenta, being able to collect stem cells from the placenta and other rich sources of stem cells--if we can take some of this $613 million that has produced zero human clinical trials to date and put it into fields that are producing or have a high potential here in a near-term basis to be able to produce treatments or possibly even cures--no ethical problem, no ethical issues; this would be clearly a key one to go forward with. I also want to further develop the thought about embryonic stem cells leading inevitably to human cloning. I want to put out some numbers on this, follow with the discussion on this. People certainly will understand it. If we are to collect and develop additional embryonic stem cell lines, we get these embryos from IVF clinics around the country, and you start these lines, the genetic match will not take place. That genetic material will not match anybody, because it is unique genetic material, so as soon as it is implanted into somebody else, there is going to be a rejection by the body taking place. That individual is going to have to be on immunosuppressive drugs for the remainder of their life, because the body is rejecting this foreign material. Therefore, the answer is to move forward, saying, well, okay, we have developed this science, we can do human embryonic stem cell work, it works, but we are getting the rejection taking place. Therefore, we are going to need to do human cloning, but it is not going to be real human cloning, it is going to be SCNT--somatic cell nuclear transfer, that is the scientific name for human cloning--and we are not going to clone, because we will create the clone, we will harvest women's eggs, we will then create the clone, and we are not going to allow the implementation of it. Therefore, we can say it is not cloning because it is not going to result in a full-scale child, by all definitions. We are going to clone a person, we are going to start human life, then we are going to purposefully kill it for its stem cells, that genetic match. That is the process this will inevitably lead to if we are successful in this science that I believe highly doubtful, given the tumor formation. But let's say we are successful in the next couple of decades, we can develop the science, the tumor issues somehow we are able to deal with, over that period of time, we get over that hurdle, we can develop it. We have an immunosuppressant problem, so therefore now we have got to move into human cloning. Where do we get those human clones? We get them from people. We have to have an egg we get from women. We will get the genetic material from the person who needs the embryonic stem cells; that is not a problem. But we are going to have to harvest a lot of eggs. I want to go through some of those numbers from different individuals who have looked and thought about this. I would hope my colleagues, even if they are on the other side of this, would think about where does this take us, which is a real question about the idea of doing massive amounts of human cloning, massive amounts of harvesting of women's eggs to do human cloning that is going to take place. Because you do not get a one-for-one match, you get the one human egg, you are not going to get it to necessarily take as a human clone, it is going to take a number of attempts to take place--I believe the numbers I have heard are somewhere around 200 eggs are necessary to get one clone to take. Now, maybe we are able to develop that technology better into the future. But if we develop this line, you are probably going to look at the need for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of embryos needed to pursue this speculative embryonic stem cell research. And for this application, you are going to need millions of eggs and millions of human clones--excuse me, I cannot call them clones--SCNT products, that is the scientific name for human clones, SCNT clones. These embryos are going to have to be developed that way to obtain sufficient embryos for this speculative research science, that will turn to human cloning, which will exploit women for their eggs, because where are we going to get hundreds of thousands of eggs? Are we going to have women in this country be willing to voluntarily go through the process, a difficult process? It can be damaging to their bodies. Maybe we will get some to do that. Probably more likely we will be going abroad to recruit people to give eggs. It is unlikely they will give them, it is more likely they will be paid for those eggs to take place, and to go through this difficult, painful, and potentially harmful problem. Is that the route we want to go, or would we be wiser to work with amniotic fluid, the cord blood, the placenta collection that is taking place, and take some of this money and develop that field? I think the route forward is pretty clear. I also want to discuss the idea we were talking about, a disposable medical infrastructure, the frozen embryos. I want to put back up a chart of one of those embryos we have here, and talk about this from a standpoint. I ask my colleagues to think about this for a second. I believe everybody is wrestling with the notion that the human embryo is alive. We all agree it is alive. Some of us will give it the status of a life; others would not. Others would call it a potential for human life. I do not believe that is the scientific term, but some would call it a potential for human life. It is a human embryo. Here is a picture of a human embryo. That is actually a child who was adopted as a frozen embryo and implanted and grew. This is, of course, what we are looking at as a physical entity. It is human. It is in the human species. We know that. All of us are having some level of difficulty with using taxpayer funding to destroy that young human life. Well, why are we having that level of difficulty with destroying something that looks like this? I think it is because in our own being, and the natural law that resides in each of us, we believe in dignity for every human being, period. We believe everybody who is here, who is listening or watching this, is a dignified person and worthy of respect and worthy of recognition as a person. That is why when we have people on death row and facing execution, we do not say, let's go and harvest their organs. When we hear that term, we are appalled by it, because we are saying: That is wrong. Well, why? Because the person is going to die. They were convicted of a heinous crime. Why not harvest their body parts and save some lives? Because we certainly could. That way we could save a number of lives by harvesting the organs of a person who committed a terrible crime. They are guilty. Despite the number of people having difficulty with the death penalty--and I have difficulty with the death penalty--why wouldn't we go ahead and harvest the organs? We are going to throw them away, right? We are going to dispose of them, right? Well, but something within us says, that doesn't feel right; that seems as if that is the wrong thing to do. And it doesn't seem as if it is right because it is not the right thing to do. It violates their human dignity, that individual, even though they have committed that crime, is a dignified human being and worthy still, even though they have committed the heinous crime, is worthy of us treating them with some level of respect, and not harvesting their organs. If they decide to voluntarily give them up, that is their choice, but they are worthy of that respect. So why, when we are looking at human life here, that all of us agree is human, alive, would we say: Well, callously, we can throw them away because they do not look like us. Well, the child at this stage starts to look like us, but it is pretty small. You can say it doesn't look much like us. Can we do it at that stage too? Then if we are uncomfortable with doing it in the early phase, or we are comfortable with doing it in an earlier phase, or when Hannah is born, can we research on her then? She cannot do a whole lot at that point in time for herself. If we leave her by herself, she will die. She can't care for herself at that point in time. So why not research on her at that point? Well, no, because she is a dignified human. So, okay, she is here. At what point? Here? Probably so. At that point? Here? Well, I don't think so. I agree she is human. I agree she is alive, but I am not willing to give her any dignity status as a human. What divides those? Some would say place, placement. If it is placed in a womb, it is. If it is not in the womb, it is not. Location has not determined personhood in our past. I would suggest it doesn't determine it in our future or presently. There is a natural revulsion toward this idea that we would take life from somebody for their body parts for somebody else, and here we are having difficulty saying, well, yes, but the possibilities are so promising we are going to go ahead and do it anyway. I quarrel with the possibilities being that promising, and I have gone through this at length with my colleagues and discussed that. Even if it were, what about the human dignity of each of us? When we have an alternative that is working, and when we have more possibilities we can fund in the amniotic fluid developing, and the placenta research, why not go those avenues, where we are actually getting some possibilities, we are actually getting people treated, and we have no ethical questions, and we can go forward aggressively and happily about it? I am pro-life and whole life. I believe life is sacred. I believe life is sacred in the womb and I believe life is sacred wherever it is. I believe a child in Darfur is sacred, I believe that person even on death row is sacred, and should be treated with dignity. I believe the youngest phase that people are is sacred and should be treated with dignity. I do not think we have to go there. And if we do go there, it leads down a path we do not want to follow in human cloning, and that we should agree with as a society. Mr. President, I want to also note to my colleagues we can spend a lot of time on this bill. I do not believe it is going to become law because of the divide in this country, because the President is going to veto it. We will see if there are votes to sustain that veto or to override that veto. I do not think this is going to become law. So why would not we then look at this as a chance for us to work together on areas that we know have high potential for cures and treatment and that unite us? There are plenty of things that divide us. There are clearly things in areas that unite us, there are clearly future areas of things that we can work on to unite us and to provide cures. Why would that not be a better approach? Are we so locked into a division here that we cannot find a way forward? I would submit we can find a way forward, and that we can work on these topics and provide cures so none of us is the poorer for it. We are moving forward. Unfortunately, too much of the work is happening overseas in the adult stem cell work and our people are not getting good access to it. I have cited several examples--that should not be happening overseas; it should be readily available here--of treatments that are developed here but are actually being practiced in places overseas because of either lack of interest or support that we would have here. I urge my colleagues to vote against S. 5. I urge my colleagues to work with me and others on developing this promising field in amniotic fluid. I urge others to work with me as we work in the areas of adult stem cell and cord blood that are currently treating and curing people and that we can do more of that and we can do that together and happily together and unite our country on an important topic instead of constantly dividing. I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWNBACK. I believe under the previous agreement I have 30 minutes at this time, may I inquire of the Chair?

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, if the Chair would please remind me when I have a minute left of my time.

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

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues for the debate, and a good one, we are having on a very important topic. The differences in this debate remind me, though, of a proverb that says there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. Unfortunately, if we research on young human life, it puts that young human life to death and at the same time does not produce the results for cures that we had hoped would be taking place. I respect my colleagues who are on another side of this issue who feel as though we should research on young human life. I do not feel that is right or ethical. I will discuss that aspect here today with some of the time I have, and I also wish to discuss the exciting breaking developments that are taking place even today on the adult stem cell area that continues to produce treatments for humans. I ask unanimous consent to enter into the Record after my statement an article from the Chicago Tribune online edition.

Mr. BROWNBACK. It is dated today. It is about the latest diabetes treatments that have been taking place. A report came out from Northwestern University in the Chicago area about a new diabetes treatment developed at Northwestern University which has allowed some patients to stop taking insulin for more than 2 years. They have raised questions about this process. It was done in Brazil rather than in the United States. Thirteen of the fifteen patients in this adult stem cell study went off insulin for at least 6 months, as they note, prompting cautious excitement from some researchers who have seen the results. Dr. Gordon C. Weir, a diabetes researcher and head of a transplantation program at Harvard's Medical School, Joslin Diabetes Center, said this: Their results look better than anything I have seen so far. What an exciting development in the adult stem cell research area and field. Questions have been raised about this trial and some of it taking place in Brazil. I have raised questions such as why is it we are seeing these breakthroughs taking place and we are having patients from the United States go to Bangkok, go to Portugal, and these treatments are being developed in Brazil rather than in the United States. I believe if we would put our funding here that we are using in the embryonic field, the $613 million that has produced no human treatments to date but has produced a lot of tumors in live animals, if we would put that in the adult field where we are getting results--we have invested in the adult field, but what if that $613 million were in the adult field today? Would these breakthroughs be happening here instead of Brazil, or by U.S. researchers in Brazil? Why aren't they being done in the United States? I hope my colleagues will look at that issue. There is another point I wish to raise with my colleagues at this point in time. Let's presume they are successful in embryonic stem cell research. Let's presume, in a decade or 20 years, they are successful with embryonic stem cell research. That is going to lead to the necessity of us moving forward with human cloning because in the development of this technology, embryonic stem cell technology, if you are using an embryo and the genetic material doesn't match up, there is going to be rejection by my body or by some body. That is going to happen. That is going to take place. So we are going to have to move into human cloning. We are going to have to harvest women's eggs, develop human clones to develop the correct type of embryonic stem cells to use in an individual so that there will be a genetic match. I think we ought to talk about that, if we continue in the progression we are on. I acknowledge that human cloning is not specifically addressed in S. 5, the embryonic stem cell bill. However, if embryonic stem cells can ever overcome their tumor-forming tendency--and that is a huge if--and they are used in humans, human cloning will be used in order to avoid immune rejection problems. Therefore, as is hopefully evident, the issue of human cloning needs to be raised. To this end, I recently introduced the bipartisan Brownback-Landrieu Human Cloning Prohibition Act, which we introduced before the break with 26 other Senators who are cosponsoring this legislation. This legislation would reaffirm that the United States places tremendous value on the dignity of each and every human person: from the young human embryo to vulnerable women who would be coerced into donating their eggs, at potentially great risk to their health. The legislation would make clear that the cloning of human persons is not something we as a society will accept. The Brownback-Landrieu Human Cloning Prohibition Act has been endorsed by the President of the United States. It will bring the United States into conformity with the United Nations, whose General Assembly called on all member states ``to prohibit all forms of human cloning.'' It did not say we can do therapeutic but not reproductive. It said ``all forms of human cloning'' by a strong 84-to-34 margin vote in the U.N. The problem with cloning human beings is that it violates human dignity on all sorts of levels. Cloning transgresses our heritage's most sacred values about what is good and true and beautiful. Western civilization indeed is built on the tenet that every human life has a measurable value. Human beings are ends in themselves. It is wrong to use any person as a means to an end. Upon this principle our laws are founded, and without it, laws have little basis. Human cloning--for whatever purpose--is wrong because it turns humans into commodities or spare parts. In recent debate, human cloning has been referred to as ``therapeutic cloning,'' ``research cloning'' or simply SCNT. These are presented as contrasts to ``reproductive cloning.'' It should be noted that ``therapeutic,'' ``research,'' and ``reproductive'' are merely adjectives to describe what is done with the cloned human. SCNT, or somatic cell nuclear transfer, is the scientific description of the cloning process. A CRS report for Congress notes: A human embryo produced via cloning involves the process called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). In SCNT, the nucleus of an egg is removed and replaced by the nucleus from a mature body cell, such as a skin cell. In cloning, the embryo is created without sexual reproduction: There is no joining of egg and sperm. Stem cell pioneer James Thomson has said: If you create an embryo by SCNT cloning and you give it to somebody who didn't know where it came from, there would be no test you would do on that embryo to say where it came from. It is what it is. If you try to define it away, you are being disingenuous. With ``reproductive'' and ``therapeutic'' cloning, human beings are turned into commodities or spare parts to be dissected in the laboratory, with the claim that someday they may be administered to other humans to provide a treatment. Treatments are certainly praiseworthy but not at the expense of the destruction of other members of the human family. We all want to treat people as people, and people should be treated as people. I want to find a cure for cancer. However, it is wrong to turn humans into a means to an end. It is also wrong to exploit women for their eggs. Here I want to develop this thought about what will take place if human embryonic stem cell research is developed, is successful. We have to develop clones that meet the genetic type of the individual seeking the treatment. You are going to have to get eggs from somewhere and you are going to have to get these from people--from women. Also, it is wrong to exploit women for their eggs, and that is the other side of the human cloning story. SCNT cloning, as proposed by proponents of the technique, would require millions of human eggs. In all likelihood, poor and disadvantaged women would be particularly vulnerable to exploitation via financial incentives for donation. This is troubling because retrieving such eggs violates the dignity of a woman and may cause serious harm to her health. The Brownback-Landrieu Human Cloning Prohibition Act is the only effective ban on human cloning. Any other ban is one that is allowing therapeutic cloning and even encouraging it but certainly not banning human cloning. Others would regulate what could be done with the human clones, normally requiring its destruction, but they do nothing to prevent the process of human cloning, which violates human dignity on many levels. We should take a stand against turning young human beings into commodities. We should not destroy human life for research purposes. I will not be voting for cloning today, and I will continue to look for an opportunity to bring this legislation forward as an amendment to other bills. Again, I point out to my colleagues that is the route we are on with this--to promote human cloning so there will be genetic matches in the human embryonic stem cell procedures. I do not believe that is the path we should follow. I want to address some of the thoughts several colleagues have brought up about what it is we are doing. Human embryos are being destroyed for research purposes and for stem cells. Some have referred to this as ``potential life,'' which strikes me as a bit like the debate we had on the issue of slavery, where we deemed a person three- fifths of a person at one point in time. That is a complete legal fiction. You are either a person or you are not. You are either life or you are not life. It is not potential life. Nowhere in the scientific literature is there a description of potential life. The embryo is a species at that stage of development in the life cycle. That is the scientific definition and information--the embryo is a species at that stage of development in the life cycle. We all have a life cycle. The embryo is the species at that stage. That is common sense. The embryo stage is a development stage, but it remains human life, not potential human life. It is alive and it is a life. The embryo would continue along the life cycle continuum if we were not interfering in its normal development by keeping it in a freezer and destroying it for experiments. I think it is important that we not engage in wishful thinking or trying to define this away. A human embryo is a human life. We should not say it is a potential life. That is not a definition for what human life is. I noted in the debate earlier--I want to make this point at this time--that it appears as if at the current research rate it would take 100 or more human eggs per cloned embryo--100 you are going to have to harvest from young women to get this process to move forward with human cloning. Mr. President, I will reserve the remainder of my time at this point. I yield the floor. Exhibit 1 [From the Chicago Tribune, Apr. 11, 2007] Hope, Risk in Diabetes Trial (By Jeremy Manier) A new diabetes treatment developed at Northwestern University has allowed some patients to stop taking insulin for more than two years, but it also has spurred ethical objections from researchers who say the trial put Brazilian children at unnecessary risk. Thirteen of the 15 patients in a stem-cell study went off insulin for at least six months, prompting cautious excitement from some researchers who have seen the results, to be published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. All of the patients had the less common form of diabetes called early-onset, or Type 1 diabetes, which normally requires close blood-glucose monitoring and long-term use of insulin injections. The new approach, designed by Dr. Richard Burt of Northwestern, enlists a patient's own stem cells in an effort to halt the immune system's destruction of insulin-producing ``beta'' cells in the pancreas--the root cause of Type 1 diabetes. Burt drafted the protocol, and doctors at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil carried it out. The patients, some as young as 14, got intense drug treatment that wiped out their immune systems. They then received injections of their own blood stem cells in hopes of renewing the immune system without the trait that makes it target beta cells. ``Their results look better than anything I've seen so far,'' said Dr. Gordon C. Weir, a diabetes researcher and head of a transplantation program at Harvard Medical School's Joslin Diabetes Center. Though small in scale, the study is significant as the first attempt to treat diabetes using a ``cell-based'' therapy, researchers said. Such treatments may become more common as scientists look beyond insulin and try approaches using adult stem cells or embryonic stem cells, which could directly replace the tissue damaged in diabetes. Type 1 diabetes accounts for 5 to 10 percent of the 21 million diabetes cases in the U.S.; the rest suffer from Type 2 diabetes, which is linked with obesity. ``These are promising results that suggest we should go further,'' said Burt, a specialist in immunesuppression therapy. Yet some experts doubted the protocol could have been approved in this country. Weir, like several other scientists reached for this report, said the risks of Burt's technique are high enough that he probably would not have approved the experiment if he had been responsible for reviewing it. The problem is this: Although early-onset diabetes can have dire long-term effects such as blindness and heart disease, many patients succeed in managing their condition with insulin and lead normal lives for decades. That makes it harder to justify the risks of stem cell transplantation, which Burt has used before on diseases with few other treatment options, such as lupus or multiple sclerosis. The immune suppression used in stem-cell transplants can cause infections and even death. None of the patients in the Brazilian study died, though one had severe pneumonia that required supplementary oxygen. Several experts said the risks could have made it difficult to get the study past American institutional review boards-- groups responsible for ensuring that research is safe and ethical. ``This is an incredibly invasive therapy to be tried on children without knowing if anyone will benefit from it,'' said Dr. Lainie Ross, associate director of the University of Chicago's MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. Ross said she would not have authorized such a study unless it enrolled only adults. She said research ethics guidelines state that risky experimental therapies should not be used on children unless it's impossible to test them on adult subjects--and in this case, adult diabetes patients were available. In fact, Burt said his original protocol included a cutoff age of 18, but a Brazilian review board changed it to allow younger patients in the study. Ages of the subjects ranged from 14 to 31, with eight participants younger than 18. Burt said the study was done in Brazil not to avoid the need for an American review board, but because he couldn't find an American diabetes expert interested in pursuing his idea. He said Northwestern review board officials told him his collaboration with the Brazilian team was fine so long as he was not directly involved in patient care. The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation cautiously embraced the technique while pointing out the need for further study. A statement from the group said that in the trial, ``the immune system was apparently reset or retrained, and after the procedure, the symptoms of diabetes were reversed.'' But the statement also noted that because of the risks, ``it is not clear whether this trial would be approved in the

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Florida and my colleague from Oregon as well. I want to address a couple of issues in response to some of the statements that have been made and also get us back to what we are discussing. On S. 5, the central issue is, will we sanction the destruction of nascent human life with Federal taxpayer dollars? There is currently no prohibition against embryonic stem cell research in this country. Any private group in Illinois or Kansas or Pennsylvania that wants to develop an embryonic stem cell line can do so. There is no prohibition. The question is, will we use Federal taxpayer dollars to destroy human life to develop additional stem cell lines? That is what S. 5 is about. The second point is, if we want to talk about cures, which I believe that is what the debate should be centered on, is it appropriate to divert taxpayer dollars from adult stem cell research, from cord blood research, from placental research, from amniotic fluid research into these areas of highly speculative embryonic stem cell research that has not produced results to date and is unlikely to produce results in the near future, if at all. If it does produce results, it is going to lead us toward human cloning, because we are not going to have a genetic match on the embryonic stem cell line. You are going to need a genetic match so you will have to develop human cloning to get a genetic match to produce the cure you want. Cloning is not on the table today, but that is what this moves us toward, because that is what is going to have to happen, if this will ever work. But it doesn't need to go that route. I want to get us back on those central questions. Let's talk about the facts on these questions. We have invested heavily as a country in embryonic stem cell research. We have invested in adult stem cell research. We have invested nearly $613 million on embryonic stem cell research. In total, since 2002, $613 million invested in embryonic stem cell research. So to say that we are not funding, we are not doing work in this area, is false. We have invested a considerable amount of work and effort in this field. Now, individuals are saying: OK, yes, you have put money into this field, but the lines on which you allow research are contaminated. I wish to draw attention to this article from Nature magazine--excuse me. I want to get this one up. This article: ``Bush Stem Cell Line Contamination is Exaggerated.'' This is from a CEO of a stem cell company: So the stuff you hear published-- I am reading the quotation-- --that all of these lines are irrevocably contaminated with mouse materials that could never be used in people--hogwash. If you know how to grow them, they're fine. That is in an article where one of the key individuals, the CEO of a stem cell company, is saying that. So we have $613 million that is in human and nonhuman embryonic stem cell research. The idea that the lines are contaminated is hogwash. They are not contaminated. They are useful. They are being used. The research is taking place. So we have this. We have $613 million going into this area since 2002. One would reasonably expect we ought to have some results after over half a million dollars going into the field in this period of time and a lot of efforts from the scientific community. We have known about embryonic stem cells for 25 years. Indeed, the magazine Nature in 2006 marked the 25th anniversary of the two papers reporting the first isolation of mouse embryonic stem cells--a 25-year celebration. So we have known about embryonic stem cells for 25 years and in humans for the last 10 years. We have been able to research on them in lab animals for the last 25 years. That is an exciting development which took place a quarter of a century ago. We have invested heavily--$613 million since 2002. We have put a lot of money into this. We put a lot of scientific effort into this. What do we have? That should be a reasonable question all my colleagues would ask. All my colleagues would say: Well, OK. We have talked about this, we have put money in it, we have discovered it, and we have put a lot of our best scientific minds into this field. What do we have? The results for adult versus embryonic: We have invested more in adult than we have in embryonic, but it is not an inconsequential amount that we have put into embryonic--$613 million. This chart shows the current human applications in the two fields of adult versus the embryonic. For allergy and infectious disease, embryonic stem cell research and human applications: zero. We have 15 in the adult field. Cancer Institute: zero in ESCR, 26 in adult. Child Health Institute: zero here for embryonic, 8 in adult. Diabetes and Digestive: zero for embryonic, three in the adult field. Eye Institute: one adult, zero embryonic. Zero embryonic, zero embryonic, zero embryonic in each of those fields. You can see what we have been able to do in the adult field by the investment we have there. So from just a sheer practicality standpoint--we have known about this for 25 years, and we have put $613 million into it. We have zero human clinical applications today taking place. We have over--and here I want to show an adjusted chart. I am sorry this is one we have had to paper over, but just yesterday we had juvenile diabetes on our board for adult stem cell application--one of the big ones. This affects a lot of people. It is one that a number of people in this body are strongly interested in, deeply interested in. I just read to my colleagues this morning from the Chicago Tribune about this adult stem cell work treating juvenile diabetes where an individual with their own--this is type 1 diabetes--treating an individual with their own stem cells at Northwestern University. Here is a quote from a researcher who was reviewing it from Harvard Medical School: Their results look better than anything I have seen so far. Type 1 diabetes. We added it, gladly, to the board today. Seventy- three different human applications we have in adult stem cells. Cord blood. We don't have amniotic fluid yet developing, which I think we should start banking the amniotic fluid from the placenta because of the rich stores of stem cells, but we haven't quite started that yet today. So we have put in money in adult and we have put money in embryonic. We have a lot of results in adult. I held this up for my colleagues yesterday, but I hope they get a chance to look at it again. This is the front page of the research findings in the adult fields we have. It is about a 4-inch binder. That was accumulated as of April 2006--last year. We did an addendum from June 2006 to March 2007. These are the findings. These are the successful results in the adult cord blood field that we have. I don't have my empty binder to show what we have on embryonic stem cell. It is a legitimate question, just a legitimate question about what we should be investing in that is yielding results in the adult versus embryonic field that is taking place. There is the tumor problem. My colleague from Utah was saying we can get over this tumor problem which is taking place. Unfortunately, I have a stack--and I put it into the Record yesterday--of 10 research papers, and that was really just a sampling of the papers where the embryonic stem cells are producing tumors. This is real. It is significant. It is not going away, these tumor-formation problems with embryonic stem cells. This is in a publication called ``Stem Cells'': ``The presentation of the insulin gene could be demonstrated only when the cells differentiated in vivo into teratomas''--into tumors. These are tumors which are taking place. This is just one of a stack of research papers saying this is a problem. It is a difficulty we have. Let's talk about patients again because, to me, that is what we really have to get to--the bottom line. We have to bring this back to the patients. We now have this exciting development which is taking place with type 1 juvenile diabetes. Unfortunately, it is taking place in Brazil instead of the United States. I wish we were having the researchers doing this in the United States. I guess they--whether they are being attracted overseas to do adult stem cell work and not in the United States--but this was Northwestern University which was doing this in Brazil. I want to look at Parkinson's. One of my colleagues raised the issue of Parkinson's, which is a very difficult, terrible disease that confronts and confounds us as a society and as individuals. I wish to point out to my colleagues an individual who came to testify in 2004 who was a Parkinson's patient and testified about his treatment with his own stem cells that was taking place, a Parkinson's patient, Dr. Dennis Turner, and he was Parkinson's free for a period of 5 years. We tried to get him in to testify a number of different times. We had trouble. He was out doing African safaris after his stem cell treatment as he was doing so well from it. My point is that we have tried this. We have tried it aggressively. We have tried it ethically to say: OK, let's try embryonic stem cell work on lines where a life-and-death decision has already been made. That was the President's determination in 2001. He was saying: We don't know at this point in time where this science will lead us. Let's try it on these ethical lines because somebody has already made the life- and-death decision. Let's put money into it. Let's start in the nonhuman area first because we want to develop this in the animal models, which is clearly the right way to go. Let's invest heavily in it, which I noted in the earlier chart where I pointed this out, the amount of animal trials, the money that has been put into animal trials on embryonic stem cell work--in 2006 alone, $110 million; $481 million for 2002 through 2006--trying to find out: Is there a place? Is there a way? Can we make this work? We continue to have this tumor problem which keeps coming up in almost all of the studies. Yet we are saying: Let's try it on human embryonic and these lines that have already been developed, and we still are not getting the results. So why would we continue to fund in this area? Now we want to expand the funding in this area and we want to expand the lines and we want to--not only go there, we want to cross the big moral divide that many of us have different opinions on but all of us have to say is a profound question: the use of taxpayer dollars to fund the destruction of young human life. We are all troubled about that. One way or the other, we are all troubled about that. That is the question on this particular bill and why it is so divisive. We all want cures. I think people are troubled about the lack of scientific results in one area and the fact that we are now at, in clinicaltrials.gov., 1,422 human clinical trials now going on, being recruited for or no longer recruiting for using adult stem cell work right now. So this is going on. It is going on well. We are not seeing any of it in the embryonic. Now we want to take another step. We want to use taxpayer dollars. We want to destroy young human life. We want to create more embryonic stem cell lines. Never mind that it hasn't worked to date. Never mind that we are getting a lot of results in this other field. Never mind that a good portion of our electorate finds this ethically very troubling. We are going to do it. We are going to go with it. We think we ought to do it. I don't think this is a wise move. I don't think it is wise practically. I don't think it is wise ethically in spite of the thoughts others might have. Ronald Reagan said: If you didn't know if somebody was alive or dead, you wouldn't bury them. If you weren't sure, you wouldn't bury them, just as a commonsense thought. My colleague from Oregon did a very good discussion of the ethical issues here, yet I could even detect in his thoughts that this is a troubling question. It is a tough one. So if we are not sure if it is alive or dead, would you bury them? No, you wouldn't. And if we have a moral question about this and we have a route where we can use this $613 million to get treatments for people like Dennis Turner, whom I put up here, and where we have had some successes, if we can get treatments for diabetes that are being developed by Northwestern University--but for some reason, we are not having enough interest here to do them here, we are having to do them in Brazil. I want people to get treatments. I want Parkinson's treatment to take place. We have a route to do this. We are not unlimited on money resources in the health care field. I think we should invest more in the health care field. We have a route to go here. We have a route that can use the resources. If we are at 1,422 clinical trials now, my guess is there would be a lot more we could try. I put up pictures of people here yesterday who are having to go to Portugal for spinal cord injury treatment. I want to put a picture back up here again. She wonders why we couldn't do this here. I might also note to my colleagues that it is critical that this is done quickly. They are finding in these early research results that the sooner you can get the treatment for a spinal cord injury, the more likelihood of success. So how many people here can afford to fly to Portugal for the treatment, and how much better would it be if this were done in Chicago or in Kansas City where people could go in this country? This lady from central Illinois was having to go to Portugal. We are finding this in the diabetes area. They are saying the sooner the treatment is taking place--and this is common sense to most of us as well--we know that the sooner you catch something, the more likelihood you have success if you get quick treatment. Should we be forcing people, then, to go to Brazil and Portugal and Thailand to get these adult stem cell treatments, many of which were developed in the United States, being done by U.S. researchers, and now are being conducted abroad? Why? I understand we are all after this goal of treatments, and I would hope--and I give that to my opponents, that is what they are after as well--they see this hope and promise. I can't cross the ethical boundary they have been able to cross. I find that each of these lives--and here, I am not quoting from a religious source; I am quoting from a biology textbook, an embryology textbook, 1996 human embryology textbook that says this about when life begins, not talking about the theology but the biology. It says: Although life is a continuous process, fertilization is a critical landmark, because under ordinary circumstances, a new genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed. The Presiding Officer wouldn't be here if he was destroyed as an embryo. If we have somebody in the future who in this body--I want to show Hannah--who was in this body who was created--or, excuse me, was started in an IVF clinic, was a frozen embryo at some point in time, she is destroyed as a frozen embryo, she isn't going to be here as a U.S. Senator. This life is a continuum. We all know this. This is not something which is new to anybody. Here is man who is a snowflake baby, a frozen embryo, who was adopted. We have another route to go on these frozen embryos. We could really push an adoption technique. If she is destroyed at this early phase, she obviously isn't here at a later phase. We know that. We know what the embryology textbook says, and we know each of us started out as an embryo, so why would we do this? I understand people are saying: Well, because we want cures. And I do, too. We have an ethical route to go on the cures. We have a route which is producing enormous successful results and one which is producing no results. Now, maybe it will, in a decade or two, over large U.S. expenditure, over a great ethical divide that we all are troubled about, and then we will expand into human cloning to be able to get a genetic match, because it will have to. Otherwise, if you do this with embryonic stem cells and implant them and the genetic type doesn't match up with that of the body, you are going to have to have immunosuppressants being used all your life. Is it likely we are going to continue that route? No. We are obviously going to have to do human cloning, develop young human clones that genetically match the individual being treated. You are going to have to harvest thousands, if not millions, or hundreds of thousands of women's eggs to get the human eggs to develop the clones. Do we want to go there with women? You are probably going to have to incentivize and pay women in poorer countries to get the human eggs to develop the clones that genetically match so you can implant them. This leads down several paths we don't want to go. So why would we start down there if we don't want to go there and we have an ethical route in which to go? I plead with my colleagues that we don't need to do this. We don't need to jump over this ethical divide, and we don't need to ignore this definition. We don't need to create a legal fiction that, yes, it is alive but it is not a life, which we are doing now with this discussion. We don't need to go back to the old debate of treating human life as property and that you can patent it and own it and manipulate it, and treat it for your own purposes. We have been there before. We have always regretted it. Why would we do that now? We don't need to go there. I say to my colleagues, let's not go there. Let's go this route we can all agree on. Let's do amniotic fluid banking. Let's do banking of those stem cells and create more treatments. Let's invest more heavily in the adult stem cell field so we can create and find those cures. Let's have treatments done in the United States and not force people to travel overseas to get these treatments. We don't need to go there. We don't need to get women into a position to pay them to harvest their eggs. We don't need to go down the route of human cloning, creating life for our own purposes. We have done that before and have deeply regretted it. This is a turning point for us. I have no doubt how the vote will come out today. It will be in favor of S. 5. I think that is regrettable. I believe the President when he says he is going to veto it. I hope he does. I will be strongly in support of him doing that. Instead of having a culture that looks at using life, let's have a culture that values life, that sees every life as dignified, beautiful, sacred, a child of a loving God, not to be used for other purposes but has dignity because of who it is, because of the beauty of who it is. What is wrong with that? Let's find cures, and we can do it. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. I am happy to yield for a question.

Mr. BROWNBACK. S. 30.

Mr. BROWNBACK. 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.

Mr. BROWNBACK. She was treated with her own stem cells.

Mr. BROWNBACK. 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.

Mr. BROWNBACK. 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.

Mr. BROWNBACK. 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.

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

Mr. BROWNBACK. 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.

Mr. BROWNBACK. That is correct.

Mr. BROWNBACK. 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. BROWNBACK. Thank you, Mr. President. Exhibit 1

Mr. BROWNBACK. 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?

Mr. BROWNBACK. 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.

Mr. BROWNBACK. That is correct. It is not a crime today.