Sam Brownback

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. I am happy to yield.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BROWNBACK. I would love to respond with a quick response. I think a third option is people are kind of interested in what these cells will do. I quoted from Lord Winston, a British stem cell researcher, saying it is an interesting area, but it is not going to produce any likely cures in my lifetime. But they are curious. They are looking at it and saying it is an interesting area of research. If we are going to cure people, let us cure people and let us talk about that kind of research. The Senator has been very kind to let me speak.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, as we are waiting for my colleagues to come to the floor, I want to address some issues that have been brought forward and talked about previously. Mr. President, I see my colleague from Iowa, and I am prepared to answer--he had raised a question about whether we had 72 different areas of treatment for adult stem cells, and so I wanted to respond.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I see the next speaker is here, and I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Oklahoma for his short, clear statement. I have some charts that will back him up. I am delighted we are having this debate. It is time. We last debated this issue on the Senate floor in 1998. A lot has developed since then. As my colleague from Oklahoma pointed out, much of the science has passed by the embryonic stem cell and the need for embryonic stem cells, as the science has gone to adult stem cells and cord blood, and that is where the treatments are. I will show pictures of patients in that area and what is taking place. I am delighted to be debating my colleagues. We have been debating this issue for some time. I think it is time we have a vote and look at this issue. When I was a young Congressman first running for Congress in Chanute, KS, a young man approached me. He knew me and knew I was running for office. He said: Can you answer one question for me? I said: I will try. I was anxious to be of help. I was anxious to prove I knew policy issues, I knew right from wrong, and I would be a good Congressman for him. He asked me: Why is it we will fine somebody up to half a million dollars for destroying a bald eagle's egg, and yet we will fund the destruction of young humans? Why is it Federal law, both cases at that point in time, as far as the funding of abortion--I don't remember when that was changed, although now we are talking about the destruction of young human life again. He said: Why is that? I thought for a while. I thought: That is a good question. I don't know why that is. I have a picture which may seem an odd place to start this debate, but it will tie in, and I will show how. I have a picture of a bald eagle's egg and a bald eagle. If I asked my 8-year-old children what happens if I destroy this egg, will I get this eagle? they will say: No, you don't get the eagle if you destroy the egg. Why not? That egg is not an eagle. I know, but the egg is the eagle because the eagle comes out of the egg. Well, he doesn't look like him. I know it is an eagle in the egg, and if you destroy the egg, you don't get the eagle. That is why we say in the Endangered Species Act, if you destroy this bald eagle's egg, you can have a maximum fine of up to half a million dollars. I want to show some other eggs, if I can. These are human embryos, fertilized eggs. They are fertilized eggs such as this bald eagle's egg is. This one, Mother Teresa once was a human embryo. JFK was once a human embryo. Martin Luther King was once a human embryo. Ronald Reagan was once a human embryo. Again, I think if we ask ourselves a simple question: If I destroy this, do I destroy this in the same way? Does it happen? If I destroy this human embryo--everybody on the Earth was a human embryo at some time--if I destroy that human embryo, do I somehow go ahead and get to be here anyway? The answer, of course, again, if you ask my 8-year-old children, is: No, you don't get to be here because you destroyed the very start of your life, you destroyed the beginning of it, you destroyed that biological entity you were because the same genetic material that was there was in Ronald Reagan, and it was a unique set of genetic material, unique to him. The same for Martin Luther King, JFK, or Mother Teresa, and the billions of people around the world. We all started as a human embryo, and if you destroy the embryo, you destroy the person. It is a unique set of genetic material right after the fertilization takes place. It doesn't matter where the fertilization takes place. It can take place in an IVF clinic or the old-fashioned way or it can take place by cloning. You still have this. You can have this, or you can destroy this and never get that. That is pretty direct, straightforward, nobody argues it. And we are not talking theology, as people try to drag this into the debate. We are talking basic biology. This is basic biology 101. If you destroy the embryo, you don't get the full-scale person. This is a genetic person, entity, special, unique, sacred, and so is this person. My point one of this is, if we use taxpayers' dollars to fund the expansion of embryonic stem cell research, you have to inherently destroy young humans to do this, and do we want to do that? What was previously said in Dickey-Wicker was: No, we will not use taxpayers' dollars to destroy young human life. Here we would change that and say: Yes, we do; it is for a special purpose, a special reason; these are unique; these are something we are really going to get cures for. And that is my second point, cures. The other side has talked about cures for a long period of time, and I want cures, and we are getting cures to take place. If we had taken the half a billion dollars, $500 million that we have invested in embryonic stem cell research in animals and humans and invested that instead in adult stem cell research and cord blood research, we would probably have a lot more people in clinical trials today. We would have a lot more people, I believe, being treated and alive today if we had taken the half a billion dollars that we put, in the last 5 years, into these areas of embryonic stem cell research and put them in adult stem cells and cord blood, we would have more people alive today, walking around, experiencing treatments and I believe cures. Let me show some faces of these people. This is a beautiful lady, Jacki Rabon. She was involved in a traffic accident. She is a paraplegic. She had to go to Portugal to get a treatment with her own adult stem cells. They are olfactory stem cells from the base of the nose. They take them out, grow them, and put them back in the spinal cord injury area. She had no feeling, no mobility, nothing below the waist. She is now getting feeling in her hips through this treatment, adult stem cells, her own stem cells. She is getting feeling in the hips and walking with the use of braces, but she had to go to Portugal to do this. Why isn't this being done in America? Why aren't we having people treated here? We are not adequately funding this area. She wants to walk and I want her to walk and she could, but we are taking money and putting them into these speculative areas when we have cures that are working. We have to go to Portugal to get them. Let's look at this next picture. This is an amazing story. This young man is named Ryan Schneider. I hosted him at a press conference 2 hours ago. He is 3 years old, a young man with cerebral palsy. His mother saved his cord blood. At 2 years of age, she started noticing that he was not growing and that his arms were retracting. She took him to the doctors and they said: Yes, CP; he has CP. The mother was devastated, but she would not give up. The morning after the diagnosis, she was lying in bed and she had this a-ha moment. She said: I saved his cord blood and let's use the cord blood and treat him with the cord blood because I think that can work and get him moving again. She called all around the country and couldn't find anybody willing to do this procedure. She was pleading with these doctors: It is simply his own cord blood, taking his own cord blood and putting it back in; this isn't going to hurt him. They said: We can't do it, not sure, we don't have FDA protocol. Finally, she finds a researcher at Duke University, whom we had in to testify, who said: Yes, we will do it, and the worst thing that can happen is nothing because nothing will happen, it is his own cord blood; it is not going to hurt him. She goes down to Duke University, takes his own cord blood, and they inject it in him. This is when he was 2. He was at a press conference today. There is no retraction taking place in the arms. He has full mobility. The thing he likes to do the most is bug his 8-year-old sister, which is what his mother said today: We like that, too, that he wants to do that. He has a word vocabulary that is normal for the age range. She said: Why isn't this an FDA-approved situation? Why are we not doing more research? Why aren't more people storing and saving cord blood so when this happens people can get cures? Well, we haven't put enough funding into it. If we had put the half a billion more dollars into this area instead of embryonic, we might have a bunch of kids treated for CP who are not getting treated and be like Ryan running around and bugging his sister instead of having CP. Here is a real interesting story, too, Keone Penn. We had him in to testify. He has sickle-cell anemia. He was dying. It is a real difficulty. Sickle cell is a very difficult problem to face, very painful problem for a child to face. He went through the New York Cord Blood Center, got treatment there, got a match. They had enough of a genetic match that it works for him. There are no indicators of sickle- cell anemia today. None. He isn't in Washington today, but we have had him in to testify. We need a lot more cord blood stored. We need a lot more diversity of cord blood stored. We could use that half a billion dollars to store more cord blood and have more ethnic diversity so more people can get treated, so more people such as him will live, not die; so more people will not have to suffer what he went through. There could be real treatments with these dollars to help them. No. 1, why are we destroying young human life? We fine people for destroying life in other forms that we want to preserve, such as the bald eagle. No. 2, why would we take this money away from current areas where we can really treat people and especially in the areas where we are not getting any treatments, we are having all the problems with tumor formation, as Dr. Coburn noted. Why are we doing that? So that fewer people are getting treatments and people are having to go overseas to get these treatments? Why? And why would we ask to do more of it now? That is what this bill is basically asking to do: That we would change Federal law so you could destroy human life with Federal taxpayer dollars. No. 2, that we would use this money, and more of it, to fund speculative areas that even their set of scientists are saying are a minimum of a decade or two away from treatments which we are not getting, and we have taken away from Keone Penn, and treatments that he could get. Why? What sense does that make? In 1943, C.S. Lewis delivered a series of lectures--this is the gentleman who did the Narnia series that has been made into a movie that a lot of young people have seen and read the Narnia series books, along with a lot of other pieces--a brilliant writer and a brave man. He did a lecture series called ``The Abolition Of Man'' in 1943, a very forward-looking series, and he noted at one point: ``If man chooses to treat himself as raw material, raw material he will be.'' It echoes themes of what we are hearing today. I don't give anybody over to a bad heart. I think everybody wants cures. I want cures. I see a way we can get treatments and hopefully cures. I want things done ethically. I don't give anybody over to a bad heart. But what we are doing is treating man as raw material--raw material to feed into a system that we hope will produce some results. Unfortunately, it is not the first time we have in human history that we have treated people as raw material. We have frequently, in the past, subjected the weaker to the will of the stronger, and we have always regretted it afterwards. We shouldn't do that today. It shouldn't have happened then, and we don't need to do it now. We are talking about the embryo, the young human life. I want to go through a couple of these points about what it is we are talking about. President Clinton's bioethics board defined young human life--and I want to give their definition for it. The National Bioethics Advisory Commission says that an embryo is: ``The developing organism from the time of fertilization''--the time of fertilization-- ``until significant differentiation has occurred, when the organism then becomes known as a fetus.'' So it is an embryo by that Presidential advisory bioethics analysis. And here is a definition taken from a textbook, the Human Embryology textbook states: 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 combination of 23 chromosomes present in each pronucleus results in 46 chromosomes in the zygote. Thus the diploid number is restored and the embryonic genome is formed. The embryo now exists as a genetic unity. That isn't Sam Brownback saying this, this is Human Embryology, Third Edition, saying that. We have a distinct genetic entity once it is formed. It doesn't matter the location. It can be the old-fashioned way, as I noted at the outset, via the human body; in vitro fertilization; it can be what some refer to as somatic cell nuclear transfer, SCNT, or what most refer to as human cloning. It is a separate entity. Pioneer stem cell researcher Jamie Thompson goes further. He says of human cloning: ``By any reasonable definition, you're creating an embryo. If you try to define it away, you're being disingenuous.'' Jamie Thompson. So we are talking about a human embryo. Now, some would say it is not big enough to be human life. Here I want to make a point, on this chart, if I could. My colleagues made the point that the human embryo is about this big; very small at its beginning of life. Therefore, because it is small and is fragile and it can't do anything on its own, you know, it is really not human life. And we should be able to destroy it, for a good purpose. We are doing this for a good purpose. This isn't us being malicious; we are doing this for a good purpose. Well, the interesting thing about that, as I said at the outset--of course, when you destroy this, you never get the full human at any point in time. This is a separate genetic entity, even at this point in time. Also, the point was made to me one time that if the Big Bang theory is correct, then at one point in time, this is the size of the universe. Then it is all condensed down, this much matter is condensed down to that infinitesimal, small size before it blows. So I guess if you destroy it then, it doesn't become the universe, but that doesn't matter. It is too small to be seen as significant, and it can't do anything on its own. It sits in a frozen state, and because it can't take care of itself, because it can't grow, because it can't breathe in this situation, then it is not human-- because it can't care for itself, because it is too fragile. It doesn't breathe. It doesn't do some of the things that we give over to the presence of life. I want to give some examples, real quick, of young people--let's use this one. This is Isaiah Sullivan Royal, born to Hannah and Jed Royal. Hannah works in my office. Isaiah was born significantly premature. As you can see, he is a fighter. He is a tough little guy. He has been through a lot--more medical treatments than most people would have gone through in their lifetime already. Without human intervention, without help, he doesn't survive and make it. Yet he is a young human, and he is beautiful. Talk to his parents about him. So the idea that just because of smallness, you can't take care of yourself doesn't make you human, is completely false. Do we want to say that because you are young and small and weak, you are worthless or helpless or you are not human, which would be even worse? That just doesn't stand. That doesn't stand to reason. Yes, human life is fragile, but it is of infinite worth and it is of infinite value. I want to now look at the overall issue of where we are with adult stem cell work. Dr. Coburn hit on this area, and I want to put some more points to it. We have, by peer review articles, 72 different areas, different human maladies being treated with adult stem cells or with cord blood--72. There was recently an article in one of the magazines saying: Well, we don't think the number is actually 72, it may be 68, it may be this or that. We can wait a day or two and it will be up to 72 because there are more coming out in all of the areas. Some people are quibbling and saying: Well, these are not in FDA treatment trials. That is true, a number of them are not because we don't have sufficient funding. A half a billion dollars would really help us to move that along to get these in FDA treatment trials. These are in human clinical applications, where there are human beings treated for 72 different maladies by adult stem cells or cord blood--72, and for embryonic, we have zero. We have known about embryonic stem cells in mice for 25 years. We have not been able to get them to work in this situation. They form tumors and they are rapid growing. With adult stem cells we know what they are about, we know what they are doing, and they are working, and people are being treated: 72 adult stem cell treatments to zero embryonic treatments. Again, you can quibble that they are not in FDA trials, not available to everybody. That is true. A lot of people are having to go overseas for treatments in some cases, and in some cases they are actually treatments that were developed in the United States, but because of FDA approval processes being long, they are having to get treatment overseas, even though the process was developed here. I want to show you the specific areas, and this is--I am breaking the rules on charts because this one has--this one is too busy, but it is the only way I can get it all on one chart: 72 current human clinical applications using adult stem cells. As I said, we could wait a week or 2 weeks, it will be more. Here are some of the amazing ones: Bladder diseases, they are developing, actually growing bladders with your own stem cells for people who have had bladder cancer or something of that nature, they are able to actually form a shell structure and the cells grow around it. The ones I like the best are in the heart areas, the cardiovascular. I had David Foege speaking at a press conference we had, he could hardly walk, advanced stroke, because of his heart problem, no infracturing rate. The physicians--I am sure I am butchering the words--I am a lawyer. I apologize for that. But he got this treatment, and he went first to a place in the United States, and they said: Look, you are just too advanced in your problematic stage. We are not going to treat you here because we want to treat early on and we only have so much money and we could use more, but we only have so much. So the guy goes to Thailand for the treatment--it may have been developed in the United States. I am not certain that it was developed in the United States, but it is used here but only on people with great opportunity to make it through. He goes to Thailand, gets this treatment. His indicators of what happened to him in the stroke are diminishing. He is out walking. He spoke at the press conference that we had, and this man has got life again. Otherwise, he would, in all probability, be dead today. And how many people are like him, that because we have slowed the development of the adult field down by putting so many of our resources in the nonproductive embryonic area, and we are getting interesting science, but with adult we are talking about real people now. We are talking about real lives of individuals. How many more of them can get treated, and how many people can afford to fly to Bangkok to get this treatment? How many are able to do that? Yet they could go somewhere in the United States. I mean, my goodness, I hope we start thinking about the people involved in this and seeing the success in so many various and different fields. I think it is important we would do that. Mr. President, I want to point out we will have, as my colleagues know, three votes that will be taking place. I do hope people will support the fetal farming ban. We shouldn't be growing young fetuses and using them for research, period. Some people are wanting to grow them further, cells differentiate and use it then. What we are talking about is an actual ban on that. I am hoping my colleagues will support that because we should not be doing that. I hope everybody would see that there is a huge moral dilemma with doing that. It is a bill that will be put forward. There is an alternative bill coming up with these pluripotent cells that I am hoping my colleagues can support. The focal point is this, do we use taxpayer dollars, Federal taxpayer dollars, to destroy young human life for research purposes? I would hope it is seen that we could develop and put forward a very clear argument and rationale as to why you shouldn't do that. It is illegal. The Dickey-Wicker appropriations language, to start off with, that is the law we previously passed. It is immoral. We shouldn't use a weaker person for the benefit of a stronger person. And it is unnecessary. That is actually the beauty of it. We are presenting false choices to people. The choice that works has no ethical problem, and we can get broad-based support for it. Then, we can have more Jacki Rabons, Ryan Schneiders, and Keone Penns who are getting treatments now, and their lives are being saved, people staying in the United States for treatment rather than going overseas for the treatment, and we have got a lot of people being successfully treated and hopefully cured. I may use that term ``cured'' too loosely because these are at the early stages. These are treatments that are showing enormous promise, but we can't--they are not, many of them are not in any sort of FDA- approved trial, so we can't use that term ``cure.'' But we have a lot of successes. The other road that is being talked about is the use of human life as raw material, and if we do that, raw material we will be. We will cheapen life. And we cheapen life any time we use it for anything other than the sacredness that life is. I hope, at the end of the day, that would be the thing we grab onto. Clearly, embryonic stem cell research is unnecessary. We don't want to cheapen human life.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, reclaiming my time, it is, and it is a very interesting feature that where the private money is going, where people have to show production coming out of it, it is all going into the adult cord blood because people know the science. And that is why I want to conclude with what I started with. In many respects, the science has passed this debate by. The science is saying: Do the adult, do the cord blood. The embryonic is not working, and you have enormous ethical problems with doing that, and we don't need to go that way. That is where the private dollars then are going, which I would hope my colleagues would look at as well. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Good. If I could, what does the Senator from Iowa desire?

Mr. BROWNBACK. I was. But I understood that my colleague wanted to speak on this particular issue. If the Senator wants to summarize and my colleague from Virginia wants to wait, I was offering him that courtesy because he had discussed coming over here early to do that.

Mr. BROWNBACK. I have other things I can cover. I understand the distinguished Senator from Virginia wanted to come over and speak on a very pressing matter of foreign policy. That is why I yielded the time to my colleague.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I submitted for the Record seven peer- reviewed articles on the creation of tumors.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Oklahoma. He is learned. He has spent the time to study these issues as a doctor. He has worked on these issues and he cares a great deal about them, and I appreciate his time and his focus on this issue. I want to discuss a few additional things in response to the comments that have been made thus far. I want to get back to what we are talking about. We are talking about destroying young human life for research purposes. I will show a picture of that so people will get the idea-- and I know people do--but it is important to remember we all started out looking like this. Even the Presiding Officer, as handsome as he is, looked like this at one point in time. Just a clump of cells--that was him. This is a particular young person by the name of Hannah with whom I just met a few hours ago. This is when she was adopted as a frozen embryo, and this shows her development taking place. If you destroy her here, we don't get her here. That is the key. She was called a snowflake: an adopted frozen embryo. I hope some people who are maybe watching or hear about this, if they have frozen human embryos, they consider putting them up for adoption because a number of people want to adopt them. A couple of people adopted Hannah. They had fertility problems themselves, could not conceive. They used IVF, and so adopted her as a snowflake, as a frozen embryo. She was implanted, and now we have Hannah. Hannah is quite--I guess you would say out of the mouths of babes, children, comes great wisdom. This is a chart she did last year when she was in Washington. When the House was considering legislation--this same legislation--she did this chart, this letter that kids write, my kids write--I love them. She said--this is Hannah--snowflake: We're kids, I love you. Then she draws three pictures here below. This is her smiling because she got adopted, and she is here. Here is another frozen embryo--these are embryos--that is sad because he is still sitting in a frozen state, and then here is one that, as she explains, is saying: What, are you going to kill me? This was her explanation to her mother who just gave this chart to me. I hope people really would think about that. This is not just a clump of tissue. This is not just a group of a few cells. This is not a hair follicle. This is not a fingernail. This is Hannah. And, if nurtured, she grows to be just this beautiful child. We have a lot of them, frozen embryos, and I hope people will consider putting them up for adoption because there are a lot of people who want to adopt them. My colleagues talked about cures. I want cures. I have talked a lot about cures here on the floor. I have talked about it for a lot of years. There are 72 clinical human trials using adult cord research. If we want the people Senator Feinstein and others talked about to get cures now, the certain way to do this is to not fund embryonic stem cell research. The people she is talking about are not going to be cured any time soon. I want to read some quotes from scientists talking about cures from embryonic stem cell research. I want to lay my hands on this real quick so that people can hear what the scientists are saying about this particular area. Let me get to that in a second, as soon as we can pull that out from the notebook. I want to hit a second point on this and then print this for the Record. Mr. President, I will ask unanimous consent that this be printed in the Record at the end of my statement. Mr. President, this is a series of one-page--a cover article on stem cells, embryonic stem cells forming tumors. We have talked about this being a problem. This has been a problem on fetal tissue research, about 15 years ago. This stack is of the front pages of peer-reviewed articles citing embryonic stem cells creating tumors when implanted in other animals. Let me just read a few of these summations. This is just the front cover, and people can look up the whole article if they want. More than 70 percent of the mice that received embryonic stem cells derived neuro processors--or precursor cells developed teratomas, 70 percent teratomas, tumors. That was a 2006 article. Rats grafted with embryonic stem cells de-differentiated in vitro for 16 days developed severe teratomas--tumors. This is an article for publication, March of 2006. I am just reading the front page of these. Here is another article, a 2005 article. We conclude that pluripotent cell types used in this study are unsuitable for achieving safe engraftment in a Guinea pig brain. Why? Creation of teratomas--tumors. Unlimited self-renewal and high differentiated potential poses the risk of tumor induction after engraftment. This is just the front page of another article, December of 2004. Here is another article. Conclusions: the cells will, however, form a tumor if they leak into an improper space such as the thoracic cavity. This is an article from 2003. Then I have three more articles. These are just summations of peer- reviewed articles. They form tumors. That is the problem with embryonic stem cells. So the Senators from California, Michigan, Iowa, and Pennsylvania and other places saying we want cures--I want cures. The research is saying embryonic stem cells form tumors. You put them into individuals, they form tumors. And while we hope at some point in time something positive happens, the problem is, they form tumors. This isn't working. So if we want treatments and cures, the answer isn't embryonic stem cells, it is adult stem cells, cord blood, where we don't have a tumor formation problem and where we are getting all of these initial successes that are taking place We are also going to consider legislation--and I will come back to another point here--we are going to consider legislation on fetus farming. There are three bills that are up and one of the bills is to ban fetal farming--fetus farming. I want to speak on that bill. I am a cosponsor of the bill. It would prohibit a gruesome procedure known as fetus farming. I am hopeful this passes with broad bipartisan support. What this prevents is growing young humans to a certain stage, then harvesting their parts like an organ donor--parts. You grow a cloned human to a certain stage, let the cells differentiate and then harvest the parts. The Fetus Farming Prohibition Act is intended to prevent the exploitation of women for the purpose of harvesting spare organs, bodies parts, and tissue. In an ideal world we wouldn't need this type of legislation, yet we have already seen four scientific papers published on proof of concept of where they clone an animal to harvest the tissue to put into another animal to see if there was a rejection issue. Such proof of concept or proof of principle is simply the first case you take before actually moving to doing it in humans. That is why we seek to ban this particular procedure. Some of my colleagues are saying of course nobody would think about doing this. I remember at the outset of this debate 8 years ago, everybody said of course we are not going to clone human beings. That is not necessary; that is abhorrent, and we wouldn't do that. The same people who were saying that are now saying it is essential we clone human beings, so the distance from ``of course we would never'' to ``of course we must'' seems to only take a matter of years and that is why we are seeking to ban this particular area of using human beings. Human beings, as I said at the outset, are ends in themselves. They should not be used for somebody else's purposes. It is beneath human dignity to turn humans into commodities--that is organ factories--and that would be the case with fetus farming. That is what this act does; it prohibits it. I am hopeful my colleagues can strongly support this ban on fetal farming that is going to come before this body and I hope will pass the House and be sent to the President for signature. I want to talk about an area that perhaps we all pretty easily fall into. That is, we get contacted by individuals who have a particular malady or disease or genetic problem and we tell them we want to give them a cure. We do want to give them a cure. Everyone in this body wants to give them a cure. But then false hope can be held out or people can start down a road that doesn't produce. That is where we have been going. That is where we are going with the embryonic stem cells. This is a route into which we put half a billion Federal taxpayer dollars and it hasn't produced. It is time to move somewhere else. We have tried this route before. I want to quote one of my colleagues on fetal tissue research. Some of my colleagues remember 10 or 15 years ago we were debating fetal tissue research. The promises sound strangely familiar, what people said. There is substantial evidence that fetal tissue research will offer a new hope of prolonged life, greater quality of life, and perhaps one day even a cure for many of these diseases at a tremendous economic and social cost-saving to the country. Then people frequently would list different areas that would be covered, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease and the like. We funded fetal tissue research. The reason I mentioned this is it is quite a bit like fetal farming. In fetal tissue research the fetus is aborted and then body parts harvested for use in somebody else, and that was going to cure everybody. We were going to get rid of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and Lou Gehrig's and cancer and all these areas with great promise. Yet we saw what happened on the fetal tissue research. Parkinson's research is set back by failure of fetal cell grants--disastrous side effect--absolutely devastating--it was tragic, catastrophic, it's a real nightmare. And we can't selectively turn it off. That was what the researchers said when they took fetal tissue and put it in somebody to deal with Parkinson's disease. What we are trying to prohibit with the Fetal Farming Act is this from backing up even further, or doing it in a clone state, and inserting cancerous tumors into individuals. You can't selectively turn it off. That is why we want to ban this. That is why it is the wrong thing to do. It was the wrong thing to do then, using fetal tissue in that particular case. It is also the wrong thing to promise people these cures when we look at the science of this and you know pretty likely this is not going to work-- from all the scientific evidence. Let me read from some of the eminent scientists. By the way, the material I had printed for the Record on tumor formation, I believe every one of these scientists, at least most of the scientists published in these articles, are pro embryonic stem cell research. They support embryonic stem cell research. They want it to work. The problem is, tumor formation, just as we saw with fetal tissue research. The cell grows fast, undifferentiated, but it can get in the brain and in some cases formed fingernails or hair follicles instead of brain tissue. What are some of the scientists who are strong embryonic stem cell supporters saying about the likelihood of human treatments using embryonic stem cells? Here I am quoting from people who support this research. Lord Winston, a British stem cell expert, has warned his colleagues over the political hype in support of human embryonic stem cells: One of the problems is that in order to persuade the public that we must do this work, we often go rather too far in promising what we might achieve. This is a real issue for the scientists. am not entirely convinced that embryonic stem cells will, in my lifetime, and possibly anybody's lifetime for that matter, be holding quite the promise that we desperately hope they will. This was in a lecture he gave in 2005. If we want to cure people, as different colleagues are talking about and giving different human examples, people examples--this is a clear route here, adult and cord blood. Put the money there if we want to cure people. If we want to do the scientific research, that is another thing, but if we want to cure people, we have an answer and it has no ethical problem to it. But we should not overhype the embryonic stem cells when the lead scientist say he thinks it is unlikely any time soon, if ever, to work, as I just quoted to you there. Let me give another quote from the journal ``Science.'' It carried a piece last summer in which supporters of embryonic--destructive human embryonic stem cell research admitted: It is necessary that prospective donors of human eggs recognize the large gap between research and therapy. This is particularly important in frontier areas of research where therapeutic impact in humans is unproven. Also, it is nearly certain that the clinical benefits of the research are years or maybe decades away. This is a message that desperate families and patients will not want to hear. If we are talking cures, we have an answer here. But it is not embryonic stem cell research. Otherwise we should not be talking about cures. We should be talking maybe about research on embryos, research on embryonic stem cells. We are interested in how they work, but we should not be talking cures because the cures are coming in the adult and cord blood route. I will have the ``Science'' article printed. I ask unanimous consent all these be printed in the Record at the end of my presentation.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Georgia for his comments. We are about to wrap up the first full day of debate. We will vote tomorrow on a package of three votes. This is an important debate. This is one area that we have needed to debate for some period of time. We haven't had a real debate on a pending bioethics bill since 1998. The science has changed dramatically since 1998 and the debate at that point in time. We should benefit from this debate and from the science. All of us are interested in people such as Jacki Rabon. I have shown her picture before, but I want to make the point again because several of my colleagues have talked about people with spinal cord injuries. They talk about people with Parkinson's disease and what they wanted to do was cure that--to get something that would work for them. That is what was motivating them. I just want to help this person. Here is a real live person; traffic accident; paraplegic from the waist down; an active athlete; excited about her future--and that all changed in a few seconds. We all know this story too well because we have heard it and seen it in our own communities. I simply ask my colleagues: What is the most likely treatment route for her? Is it adult and cord blood stem cells or is it embryonic stem cells? We have to make choices on dollars and where you invest funds. If we take the $.5 billion that we have invested in the embryonic stem cells in human and animals over the last 5 years and say we are going to get people such as Jacki walking again, what are we going to invest that money in? Is it going to be on embryonic or adult? She is already showing some improvement and feeling in her hip area. She is able to walk now with braces-- through use of adult stem cell therapy which, unfortunately, she has had to go to Portugal to get. Researchers are here, but they cannot get into the FDA trials. Clearly, the answer, if we want her to walk again during her lifetime, is to work and to fund adult and cord blood stem cells. That is where we are going to get the treatments. That is where it is working. The other areas may provide some interesting science. But if we are interested in helping people such as Jacki, we have one area that works, and we have another area into which we have put $.5 billion and it hasn't worked--and we know that. I want to show you a picture of Dennis Turner. He has been brought up in this debate. I have had him in to testify. He is a Parkinson's patient. We want to cure Parkinson's disease. He was Parkinson's-free for 5 years because of adult stem cell therapy. It started to come back after that period of time, but he got 5 years of his life back. If our objective is to have a treatment or cure for people such as Dennis Turner, where are we going to put the money? Are we going to put it in embryonic stem cells, where the scientists supporting it say this will take decades to find any sort of treatment, if they ever find a treatment, or put it into the adult stem cell area where they are already showing some results? I know if I have limited resources, I would want to put my money where it is most likely to yield. It clearly is in the adult and cord blood stem cell area. A lot of allegations and questions have been made regarding adult stem cells and cord blood and whether they are actually showing the types of results that I have been suggesting. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at the end of my statement the current list--it gets updated often--of 72 current human clinical applications using adult stem cells.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, next week it will may be 75, but for this week it is 72. My point in saying highlighting this is that some have said they really question whether we are getting that many treatments. There have only been nine FDA-approved full clinical trials, full treatment areas using adult stem cells. Okay. I will take that. I do not know if that is an accurate number. But remember that FDA is the standard where you have to go through clinical trials 1 and 2 to get the application and get it tested before it is fully used. I note that people are challenging how many areas of adult stem cell are being treated. I welcome this debate. I think we should be looking at the science and where it is going. They were saying we really question whether this many areas of adult stem cell treatments are actually happening. They produced an addendum to their challenge on it. They went through all of the 65 areas at that time. It is now 72. But when they did the review, it was 65. The Senator from Iowa was particularly challenging whether we have this many treatment areas. He pulled out one on testicular cancer and said: I don't think they are really getting it there. But this addendum is the people challenging the number of adult stem cell areas that have treatment. On testicular cancer, the researcher described a clinical evaluation showing improved long-term survival of a relapsed testicular cancer patient following the radical therapy that included a transplant of adult stem cells from bone marrow or blood. The research is actually showing that it was an improvement. I am not saying that these are all FDA-approved areas. This is an area of research. But you actually have a researcher saying it showed improvement. This isn't the group who is challenging whether we are getting these treatments at all. They are not cures today. This is research. But the research shows a promise even in the area that they challenge. Leukemia--this is from the same addendum. Two clinical studies, each incorporating multiple leukemia types, indicate that adult stem cell transplants from bone marrow or umbilical cord blood improved the survival of children with leukemia. That is not FDA approved. But it is working. This, after only a short period of time that we have been working with all these different types of adult stem cells. We have known about them in bone marrow for some period of time. Some patients with Hodgkin's lymphoma show an overall improved survival rate when transplanted with adult stem cells from blood. The list goes on and on. I welcome a debate about whether we are getting treatment for areas where people are showing improvement taking place with adult and cord blood because the truth of matter is we are. These are not all FDA approved. We never said that they were. The problem is we need more money to be able to get more of these FDA trials so that we can get more people treated. If we do that, there is a very promising area that is already showing results. Why not put your money there? Let me give my colleagues a visual of this, if anybody is interested. There is a notebook of showing the accumulation of recent advances in adult stem cell research and other alternatives to cloning and embryonic stem cell research. This is a one-page summary of each of these areas where we are getting treatment. Note that I am not saying cures. I want to be very careful with my words. The treatments are promising in adult and cord blood. Look how thick this book is. This is just one-page summaries of each of these various areas--cord blood, cartilage, brain damage, cancers. It has been very impressive. If you do not like this example or if you are still questioning whether we are showing this much progress in adult stem cell, I invite people to go on the Internet and look at a site called ClinicalTrials.gov. This is an area where clinical trials are listed on the Internet. I didn't know about it until today. It sounded very interesting to me. It shows, as of now--I guess these numbers are actually growing with 565 such clinical trials currently active or recruiting patients using adult or cord blood stem cells to treat people. If we want to cure people, if we want to find real treatments, if we want to see cures for people with spinal cord injuries, Parkinson's, diabetes, cancer or heart disease, the clear area to invest in is adult and cord blood. That is the clear area to go into. Let us look on the other side of the aisle on this the embryonic stem cell work which is being pushed here today. By the way, my colleagues have known about this for a very long time. We have known about embryonic stem cells for 25 years. We have worked and looked at these things for a long period of time. They say this is arbitrary and it is not going to support killing embryos. What is being talked about is using taxpayer money to expand the lines of embryonic stem cell research. To get embryonic stem cells, you have to destroy an embryo. The President set a date, August 9 at 9 p.m, when he was delivering a speech to the Nation saying, after this point in time, we are not going to fund it any further because we do not want to fund the additional destruction of human life. We will work on it on a prior date. That is why that date was picked. Here is a clear demarcation. We will fund it prior; we have to the tune of half a billion on human and animal. It is both. After that, we will not fund it on humans because the life-and-death decision has already been made on these designs prior to August 9 but not on future ones. Now, if we say we are going to use taxpayer money to fund any human embryonic stem cell research, people could go out today after we fund this, destroy human embryos, develop the lines, and have Federal taxpayer dollars. I again point out to my colleagues, there are no prohibitions in the United States today against any embryonic stem cell research. You can do it anywhere you want. We do have a limitation on the Federal taxpayer dollars, on where they can go in the future destruction of human life. Now, with this half a billion that we have invested over the last 5 years, how many human treatments do we have from embryonic stem cells? I have a notebook that shows the number of human treatments. I will show this notebook again. This is adult and cord blood. Here are human treatments on embryonic stem cell research. We do not have the research. It is not there. They do not exist. It is interesting research. It has proven very problematic to get to people. A number of my colleagues have been pushing this bill for some period of time, and I do not question or challenge what they were doing. I think they want to find cures. But the problem is we have not found treatments in the embryonic field. They were saying in the year 1999 one of my colleague's medical experts testified that it may well be within 5 years of a cure for Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, and a long list of other human ailments. Stem cell research has enormous potential. That is true. But it is adult cord blood stem cell research that is working. It is not embryonic. The embryonic has not produced the treatments. That was 1999. We are 7 years later, and it has not produced a peer-reviewed treatment. We have scientists who testified at a hearing in 1998. Mr. President, I refer my colleagues to www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate for that testimony. Mr. President, when Dr. Gearhart was asked how long will it be before we get these cures to Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, or cancer, he responded: I actually think within several years, to be honest with you . . . That was 1998. Eight years later, here we are. Dr. Gearhart--one of the leading researchers in this field. Then Dr. Thompson, one of the leading researchers on Parkinson's: I am going to say 5 to 10 years more. It will be one of the first ones. We do have a treatment being developed. And it is adult stem cells for Parkinson's. We do not need to make this life-and-death decision and expand taxpayer funding for the embryonic lines. My point is, in 1998 the leading researchers were saying we will have these cures in a few years, 5 to 10 years, and now researchers are saying it is decades, if even in their lifetime, that it will happen. I conclude with this point. If this were all in the abstract and we were saying that we will spend another half a billion in this area, go ahead and do that, you could say: Well, all right, we spend a lot of money around here, we will do that. The problem with it is: how many millions of dollars will be spent on research, which is based on destroying human embryos that become human people? This is the beginnings of human life. That is the real ethical rub on top of the financial rub of whether this is the right place to invest. I have cited the snowflake child, Hannah previously. Was she just a clump of stem cells? Early life can be very fragile. This is Isaiah Royal, born to one of my staff members. Isaiah Royal was born at 24 weeks of age, very early. He is a fighter. But I don't think you can possibly say he is not human life. He is just 23 weeks after the embryonic stage that we are talking about, 23 weeks and a couple of days after that. Would you deny that he is human life? You would say no, of course not. Isaiah is struggling. He weighed 1 pound 14 ounces at birth. He is a good, tough, fighter. But we are talking about fragile human life, and it should be treated as sacred. We should not do research on it. Human life is important. This is an important question. I urge my colleagues to vote against H.R. 810. Exhibit I 72 Current Human Clinical Applications Using Adult Stem Cells 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 hemoglobin). Primary amyloidosis (A disorder of plasma cells). Diamond blackfan anemia. Fanconi's anemia. Chronic Epstein-Barr infection (similar to Mono). auto-immune diseases Systemic lupus (auto-immune condition that can affect skin, heart, lungs, kidneys, joints, and nervous system). Sjogren's syndrome (autoimmune disease w/symptoms similar to arthritis). Myasthenia (An autoimmune neuromuscular disorder). Autoimmune cytopenia. Scleromyxedema (skin condition). Scleroderma (skin disorder). Crohn's disease (chronic inflammatory disease of the intestines). Behcet's disease. Rheumatoid arthritis. Juvenile arthritis. Multiple sclerosis. Polychondritis (chronic disorder of the cartilage). Systemic vasculitis (inflammation of the blood vessels). Alopecia universalis. Buerger's disease (limb vessel constriction, inflammation). bladder disease End-stage bladder disease. cancers Brain tumors--medulloblastoma and glioma. Retinoblastoma (cancer). Ovarian cancer. Skin cancer: Merkel cell carcinoma. Testicular cancer. Lymphoma. Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Hodgkin's lymphoma. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Acute myelogenous leukemia. Chronic myelogenous leukemia. Chronic myelomonocytic leukemia. Juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia. Cancer of the lymph nodes: Angioimmunoblastic lymphadenopathy. Multiple myeloma (cancer affecting white blood cells of the immune system). Myelodysplasia (bone marrow disorder). Breast cancer. Neuroblastoma (childhood cancer of the nervous system). Renal cell carcinoma (cancer of the kidney). Soft tissue sarcoma (malignant tumor that begins in the muscle, fat, fibrous tissue, blood vessels). Ewing's sarcoma. Various solid tumors. Waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia (type of lymphoma). Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis. POEMS syndrome (osteosclerotic myeloma). Myelofibrosis. cardiovascular Acute Heart damage. Chronic coronary artery disease. immunodeficiencies Severe combined immunodeficiency syndrome. X-linked lymphoproliferative syndrome. X-linked hyper immunoglobulin M syndrome. liver disease Chronic liver failure. Liver cirrhosis.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Thank you very much. I want to point out in a little different format to my colleagues that when we talk about direct areas of being able to get treatments-- we covered this some today--this is a little bit of a different presentation and a little more directly related to where we are getting treatments in this field, which is in the adult stem cell field. Here are some of the various areas where we get direct treatments. The area of embryonic research, while interesting and intriguing, is not producing any results. It is not producing any cures. We are getting direct results from the adult, and we are not getting the formation of tumors in the adults. This area is working. I also point out this is at no cost. People say these are embryos and we are throwing them away. You look at that. And I had this morning in my office and at a press conference three snowflake babies. These are all babies who were in in vitro fertilization clinics, were not going to be implanted by the natural parents, were given up for adoption. They are here now, and they are beautiful and they are wonderful. They are absolutely precious. This isn't some sort of throwaway commodity. I point out to people that if you are one of those individuals who have frozen embryos--the number I hear is that 1 in 10 people in the United States suffer from infertility problems. There are a lot of people who would want to and do want to implant these frozen embryos and give them the nurturing they need to become humans we would all recognize. I hope people will look at that. My other point is on President Reagan, who certainly was an inspiration for me to get into public office, and had a beautiful winsomeness about his presentation of truth. He was a fabulous individual. President Reagan was pro life. President Reagan did not and would not agree with the destruction of young human life. In fact, he said at one point in time, if there is a doubt about whether it is a life, if somebody was dying and there was a doubt about whether they are dead, you wouldn't put them in a casket and bury them. You would give them the benefit of the doubt. You would say, Well, let us work to bring them back. The same on the young end--if there is a question, you err on the side of life. You treat this as life. There is a kind of common sense about it. President Reagan was pro life. He fought for pro-life issues. He would not want to see us destroy one human life for the benefit of another. A final point in this area: President Reagan suffered Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's is, as I understand it being explained to me, a plaque disease on the brain material. It is highly unlikely it is going to be treated with stem cells. Parkinson's is an area where we have adult stem cell treatment--a different type of disease. But the disease President Reagan fell to was Alzheimer's. It is highly unlikely that any stem cell, even adult or cord blood, and even more unlikely embryonic or cloning, would deal with the area of Alzheimer's. The only reason I mention that is I think we need to try to be very accurate in our debate in saying what is a good possibility and hope and what is not. That one would be unlikely. Parkinson's we have a good shot at in the adult stem cell, and we have some early treatments already showing some promise in that particular field. But I don't think it is wise that we bring that up in that particular instance in the case of Alzheimer's. I think it is important that we be very clear about what this is and what will work and what will not. The other thing I want to make mention of when we are talking about cures for things in this field is let us talk about areas where we have real scientific prospects of getting this done in the adult field. In the embryonic, as we have said for some period of time, it is unlikely to produce any sort of direct benefit to patients any time in the near future. That is according to scientists who are pro embryonic stem cell research. We can do more research in this field. There is some understanding from the presentation of the Senator from Georgia talking about other areas to derive embryonic type of stem cells. That is something we can do. The scientific community is producing more and more results in that particular area which I think are quite helpful and quite promising for us. It removes the ethical dilemma on this. It would be deriving embryonic type stem cells but without destroying embryos. We are coming up with this along with the stem cell line. People are coming up with this in other fields. There is no reason to go into the ethical area--the question of destroying human life with taxpayer dollars to be able to get that done. I think it is important that we point out those particular areas in this bioethical debate. One of the bills we will be voting on is an alternative bill. I talked about the fetal farming bill. I hope that passes 100 to zero so we can ban fetal farming. A lot has been talked about on H.R. 810, which is expansion of the stem cell lines using embryos and Federal taxpayer dollars to do that. What has been talked about less is this area of the Santorum-Specter bill which would create embryonic type stem cells without destroying embryos. Here is a way for people, if they are troubled about the ethics of destroying a young human--I really do not want to do that, but you think there is a promising area of inquiry on these embryonic type stem cells and you are looking at this saying, Yes, it is not producing cures or results right now, but it might in a decade or two, so I would like to see this pursued--here is an ethical alternative for you to pursue. You don't have to say, Let's destroy this young human life. You can say, Let us go with the alternative here where we are finding scientifically that we can derive these types of stem cells without the destruction of human life, embryos. If you like this field of inquiry, I raise a question about embryonic stem cells because we have invested $.5 billion in animal and human. We don't have any applications for it today, but if you are still saying we still ought to invest in this field because it might produce something, it might produce something big, you have an alternative which you can vote for in this Santorum- Specter alternative bill, and say, We want to pursue the science in this particular field. That is an area and a possibility that could work and we can and should, I think, pursue. I think it would be a good alternative for somebody who is in that type of quandary about which way to pursue this. I will have further comments later on this evening. I don't want to take up the other side's time. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the privilege of the floor be granted to Nicholas Greenway and Eugene Lipkin, interns here on Capitol Hill.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I believe we are in morning business.

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

Mr. BROWNBACK. I thank my colleague from North Dakota for that as well.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I rise to talk about the situation in North Korea and about the dire situation of the people of North Korea and the human rights abuses that are taking place. I think most of my colleagues know about the missile testing that has been occurring in North Korea, about the difficulty in getting negotiations going on the six-party talks. I applaud the administration for their efforts on getting these six-party talks moving on North Korea. I also wish to draw the attention of my colleagues to the human toll that is taking place in North Korea. Kim Jong Il, the leader of North Korea, has been a weapon of mass destruction against his own people, killing 1.5 million of his own people in prison camps--nearly 10 percent of their entire population--over the past 15 years. In particular, I draw to the attention of my colleagues an article that is in today's Asia Times Online because I think this actually summarizes the overall situation pretty well. North Korea and South Korea have been talking quite a bit, and the South Koreans have actually sided with the Chinese and the Russians on a weaker U.N. Security Council resolution. The North Koreans just walked out of ministerial talks with the South Koreans, saying that they want to pursue a missile weapons system--the North Koreans do--for the protection of the entire Korean peninsula, including South Korea, which is absurd. This will be used against the South Koreans. At the same time they want to pursue missiles, nuclear technology, the North Koreans are demanding from South Korea half a million tons of rice and several hundred thousand tons of fertilizer to help feed the starving North Korean people at a time when the Government is investing heavily--millions and billions of dollars, perhaps--in missiles and nuclear weapons which they can then sell to other countries, such as to the Iranians, where the missile technology in Iran is based upon the North Korean missile technology system. And then they have the gall at the same time to demand food out of South Korea to feed their starving people in North Korea and fertilizer to be able to grow their crops. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have this article printed in the Record at the end of my statement.

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, this is just amazing gall, that they would do something like that, and it also highlights the situation and what is taking place. I hope North Korea knows by now that their behavior has consequences. The Security Council is considering a resolution. I hope we are able to get the tougher one that the Japanese are pursuing. The one from China and Russia clearly does not go far enough. We should work with our allies to attempt to defend against the North Korean threat. Our missile defense programs now are more important than ever. Thankfully--thankfully--we have put a missile defense program in place that is not fully operational but should help us against these rogue regimes such as North Korea and Iran which are far less predictable--I think one could probably use that term--than what the former Soviet Union was, even though the Soviet Union had a bigger threat capacity. What the President of Iran will do and what Kim Jong Il will do is hard to predict. These are very erratic leaders and ones who don't respond well, if at all, to a mutual destruction type of threat that we used against the Soviet Union. We need the missile defense system. The basic problem is the North Korean regime itself. The regime has turned North Korea into a failed state. I had hoped to bring over to the Senate floor this morning a picture that is pretty well known by most people. It is a night photograph of the Korean peninsula, and it shows lights in South Korea, it shows lights in China, and it shows darkness in North Korea, which highlights the nature of the failed state. This is just so amazing, that we have the Korean peninsula divided into two countries--South Korea, the 12th largest economy in the world, democratic and free, growing, robust; and North Korea, having killed 10 percent of its people in the last 15 years through starvation and a gulag system--on the same peninsula. North Korea is a failed state. The North Korean regime engages in illegal activities, including counterfeiting American money as well as producing missile systems and expanding its WMD programs. It has a humanitarian crisis. I noted earlier that an estimated 1.5 million prisoners have been killed in North Korea's prison camps. The gulag remains. Approximately 200,000 are currently in prison--political prisoners in North Korea. The assistance China and South Korea provide to North Korea makes them complicit in North Korea's missile development program. The assistance keeps their economy on life support, and thanks to North Korea's lack of transparency, even humanitarian aid is often diverted from the North Korean people for military use. North Korea's symptomatic human rights abuses are often lost amidst our discussion of its nuclear and missile programs. We should set a longer term goal to bring to light the humanitarian abuses that are taking place. We need a Helsinki-type of discussion on human rights. We should not just discuss missile technology or nuclear technology; we need to discuss the humanitarian crisis that is in North Korea. I also believe we need to discuss the elephant that is in the room that nobody will discuss. North Korea is a failed state. Hundreds of thousands have walked out of North Korea into China. Some are now finding a way into the United States as refugees. They tell horrific stories of what is taking place. The natural state of the Korean peninsula is one country, whole and free. That is the long-term goal for the natural state of the Korean peninsula--one country, whole and free. We should set that as a long- term objective--the spread of democracy throughout the Korean peninsula. I urge the Bush administration to fully fund the programs authorized by the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004, and I urge my colleagues to fund those programs as well in the appropriations process. We should be prepared to accept those North Koreans who voted with their feet and escaped the regime into this country and others as well. We had our first group, a small group of six North Korean refugees, and four were women. The women said that the refugees that make it out of North Korea into China, 100 percent are trafficked into some form of sexual bondage or sexual slavery. They get out of North Korea into China--that is relatively simple--and then they are captured, almost hunted like animals in China. When they are captured, the people who catch them say: Look, you are going to do what I say or I am turning you in to the Chinese authorities; they will repatriate you to North Korea, and you will end up in the gulag. So they do what they say, and they are sold. They are caught like wild animals and sold to people in some form of sexual bondage and sexual slavery in that portion of China. We should push China aggressively to stop repatriating North Korean refugees. They are going back into the gulag. They are going back into the death camps. The Chinese should be forced not to do that. It is called refoulement. It is against the U.N. agreements on human rights that they entered into. They should be forced not to do that, not to send them back. We should begin discussions with China and South Korea on what the Korean peninsula should look like in the future--one country, full and free. The bottom line is that our problem isn't just the missile or nuclear capacity of North Korea, it is the North Korean regime itself. We must address the root problem if we are ever to find a solution. I might remind my colleagues as well that it is not just the missile tests, it is not just the nuclear technology in North Korea, because then they look to sell it, as they have, and spread it to Iran, which multiplies our sets of problems. We must look also at what happens to the North Korean people, and much of our focus must be placed on China. China is the one that is primarily keeping North Korea on life support systems now. They are funding them. The Chinese, by not refouleing refugees, by allowing North Koreans to come out and pass freely through there to third countries, would really help a great deal in this crisis, and China bears much of the responsibility. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues for the chance to address the body. We are looking at putting forward a resolution calling on any future dialog with North Korea to include a human rights component. Along with the discussion of missile technology and nuclear technology, it desperately needs a human rights component, as we did in negotiations with the former Soviet Union on missiles and nuclear weapons. We also included a Helsinki human rights component. This discussion needs a human rights component as well. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Connecticut for allowing me to step in front of him to speak, and I yield the floor. Exhibit 1 [From the Asia Times, July 14, 2006] North Koreans Let Their Feet Do the Talking (By Donald Kirk) Seoul.--The ruckus over the North Korean missile shots has exploded into a war of words that's endangering South Korea's efforts to shrug off the crisis as a minor obstacle on the path to North-South reconciliation. South Korea appears to have awakened to the depth of the difficulties with the North in the breakdown of ministerial- level talks this week in the port city of Pusan. Far from finding the basis for one of those face-saving statements that often emerge from North-South Korean talks, the two sides cut off the dialogue on Thursday a day earlier than expected after finding no ground for agreement. The sides were absurdly far apart, according to reports from the closed-door sessions, with North Korea insisting the missiles were needed for the defense of all Korea, North and South, not just North Korea. Finally, the North Koreans walked out on Thursday after South Korea's Unification Minister Lee Jeong-seok flatly rejected their claim that the North's Songun or military first policy covered both Koreas equally. The talks were originally to have gone on until Friday. Lee, a one-time leftwing activist who has sought mightily to paper over North-South differences, got nowhere in efforts at persuading North Korea to return to six-party talks on its nuclear weapons. At the same time, he rejected North Korean demands for half a million tons of rice and several hundred thousand tons of fertilizer to help feed starving North Koreans at a time when the government is investing heavily in missiles and nuclear weapons. The failure of the talks is ominous since they were ``ministerial level''. The North Korean delegation was led by Kwong Ho-ung, chief cabinet councilor. The North Koreans, before boarding a direct flight from Pusan to Pyongyang on Air Koryo, the North Korean airline, said ``our delegation was no longer able to stay in Pusan'' as a result of the South Koreans' ``reckless'' insistence on raising the issue of the missile tests. Suggesting the seriousness of the collapse, a statement distributed by the North Koreans said the North now had no dialogue partners in the South ``due to the South Korean side's unreasonable'' position. The statement said they had not come to Pusan to discuss military matters or six-party talks. South Korean leaders, caught between conflicting demands from the United States, North Korea, China and Japan as well as their vituperative critics and foes on their own home front, remain determined to head off U.S. and Japanese attempts to bring about a debate in the United Nations Security Council on sanctions against North Korea. South Korean officials firmly favor a resolution introduced by China and Russia that ``strongly deplores'' the missile tests and calls on all nations to ``exercise vigilance in preventing supply of items, goods and technologies'' for North Korean missiles. The resolution also asks them ``not to procure missiles or missile-related items'' from North Korea. The fear in the South is that a debate on a much tougher Japanese resolution, banning North Korea from deploying or testing missiles, importing or exporting missiles or weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear warheads, or developing any of them, would greatly exacerbate tensions. South Korean strategists believe such a strong resolution would arm Japan with the pretext for following through on threats to attack North Korean missile sites. In fact, South Korea has responded with far greater alarm to Japan's floating this idea than to the actual missile tests, while the rift between Japan and South Korea has turned into what appears as an unbridgeable chasm. A spokesman for South Korea's President Roh Moo-hyun blasted Japan for what he called a ``rash and thoughtless'' threat. It was, he said, ``a grave matter for Japanese cabinet ministers to talk about the possibility of a preemptive strike and the validity of the use of force against the peninsula''. U.S. officials, led by Christopher Hill, privately warned Japan against a preemptive strike, reminding the Japanese that open discussion of that possibility only invited an adverse response from South Korea as well as China. Such talk, they note, also plays into North Korea's propaganda machine, which often emits noises about U.S. plans for a ``preemptive strike'', citing that danger as a rationale for the need for nuclear weapons. The U.S., however, sides with Japan in the United Nations, and no U.S. official adopts a harder line than the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton, a tough-talker from his days as under secretary of state for arms control during President George W. Bush's first term. Bolton and Japan's U.N. Ambassador Kenzo Oshima have engaged in the diplomatic nicety of calling the Chinese and Russian draft ``a step in the right direction''. South Korean officials believe, however, they may hold off on supporting it, calling instead for a debate that gives both of them a forum for lambasting North Korea. Oshima found ``very serious gaps'' in the Chinese and Russian draft, while Bolton seemed anxious to have the Japanese resolution submitted to a vote despite the certainty of Chinese and Russian vetoes. ``We're prepared to proceed at an appropriate time with a vote,'' said Bolton, and ``let every one draw their own conclusions.'' The standoff over how to deal with North Korea comes at a critical time in relations between the U.S. and South Korea. A U.S. team has just arrived in Seoul for talks about creating an ``independent wartime command'' for South Korean forces rather than a unified command led by a U.S. general. The creation of such a command marks a major--and controversial--departure from the system dating from the Korean War placing all forces under a single American general in the event of war. The U.S. is also consolidating its bases in South Korea, moving them south of Seoul in the face of widespread opposition by activists and farmers resentful of the loss of their land while the U.S. scales down its forces, now totaling 29,500 troops, down from 37,000 three years ago. Activists and farmers also oppose efforts by the U.S. and South Korea to come up with a free trade agreement (FTA). More than 20,000 people demonstrated in a heavy downpour in central Seoul on Wednesday, charging the agreement would deprive farmers and factory workers of their livelihoods. While the North Koreans walked out of the talks in Pusan, U.S. negotiators boycotted a session of the FTA talks in Seoul on pharmaceuticals. The U.S. claims a plan for South Korea to reimburse patients for the purchase of drugs made in South Korea makes drug imports here virtually impossible. It was a bad day all around for U.S. negotiators. Hill, in Beijing, said he was finally taking off for Washington after getting nowhere in efforts at persuading China to bring North Korea back to the table. He tried, however, to see the impasse from China's viewpoint. ``China has done so much for that country,'' he said, ``and that country seems intent on taking all of China's generosity and then giving nothing back.'' The Chinese, he said, ``are as baffled as we are.'' The U.S. and China, however, seemed in complete disagreement on U.S. Treasury Department restrictions on firms doing business with North Korea. Hill had nothing to say in response to the official Chinese hope, expressed by a spokesman, that the U.S. would ``make a concession regarding the sanctions issue and take steps that will help restore the six-party talks''. The U.S. denies it's imposing ``sanctions'' and says the restrictions are to counter North Korean counterfeiting. Hill has repeatedly dismissed the topic as a matter for the Treasury, not the State Department, while North Korea has made the issue the reason for not returning to talks on its nukes.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I stand to deliver some good news today to the Senate and hopefully contribute to the debate we are going to have probably in July on the overall issue of stem cells, embryonic stem cells, human cloning, adult stem cells, and cord blood. I wish to start by saying I think everybody is of good heart and good mind in this body and that they want to try to do something to help people in this country. While we have some differences of opinion on embryonic stem cells and on human cloning, there is strong bipartisan support in the adult stem cell and cord blood area. The differences come down to the basic view of the youngest of human life. This is a long debate. It has been going on for some time. We have differences of opinion. I view human life as sacred at all of its stages and all of its places. Period. It is unique, it is beautiful, it is a child of the living God. It deserves our respect and protection under law at the very earliest stages of life and at the very latest stages in life. It is life in this country and a life in other countries. It is life seeking to come to this country in whatever form it may be. This life is unique and sacred. We can try to divide it under law. We can say it is property at this stage of life; it is not worth living at that stage of life. All of those, I think, are false distinctions. Life is sacred, period, per se because it is human and it is sacred, period, because it is human. That is the point of view from which I come. That is the point of view from which I think a lot of Americans come. When people think about it, when they look at this issue they say: How else would you divide a baby? It is pretty hard to do unless you start where life begins and you end where life ends and you don't draw distinctions in between. Others are willing to draw that distinction in between and say a human life is not sacred, per se, at certain early stages, or if it is so decrepit at other stages of life. I think those are false distinctions. I don't think they stand the test of science. I don't think they will stand the test of time. I don't think they will stand the test of reason if one really thinks it through. That is really where we get to the point of distinction on this debate, on human embryonic stem cells, on cloning humans for stem cells. Scientifically, it may be doable. Ethically, is it moral? Is this human life a person or a piece of property? In our jurisprudence system, they are one of the two: They are either a person or a piece of property. Everything in this room--the Presiding Officer is a person; what he has on is property. People in this room are people, everything else is property. What is the youngest of human life? Is it person or property? We have had this debate before in this country. We have looked at it; we have drawn distinctions. At points in time, even in our Constitution, we have said a person was only three-fifths of a person, and yet we knew at that time: How can you be three-fifths of a person? That didn't stand the test of time and reason then, and it doesn't stand the test in this country now. Some will say that the youngest of human life is property and at some point in development it becomes a person. Yet in our jurisprudence system, we don't recognize the transition that you can go from property to personhood and, if so, where on Earth would you draw that line? When would it happen? The biology is quite clear on this point. If you start out a person, you end up a person. If you start out a human being, you don't become a plant. If you start out a human being, you don't become a desk. If you start out a human, you end up a human. The biology on this is clear. If you are a human embryo and you are given nurture, you end up, by anybody's definition, a full-scale human being. You don't transition. You don't start out as a piece of property or an egg that is going to become an eagle and end up a person. It is one person. At one point in time, we have all started out as an embryo. Whether you are Sam Brownback, the Presiding Officer, or anybody in this room, we all started out being a human embryo. We didn't start another way. If you destroy us at the earliest stage, you never end up with us at this stage. That is a basic fundamental of the argument. It is an old, old, old debate for human societies. We have had this debate. Typically, in fighting around the world, people try to dehumanize the other side. I remember watching a film on Rwanda, ``Hotel Rwanda,'' about the Rwandan genocide. I was just in Rwanda last year and in the Holocaust Museum. The one side persecuting the other side, killing nearly 800,000 in 3 weeks, in the very typical fashion of human beings demonizing the other side and calling them less than human, they were subhuman--they were roaches is what they actually referred to them as. One can look at old war propaganda and typically one side tries to demonize the other side, calling them something less than human, they are subhuman. That is a very old human debate about whether this is really a person. The truth is, the debate never stands up under any examination. Of course, the Hutus and Tutsis are humans. Of course, in our earliest Constitution, a slave was treated as three-fifths of a person; they are a full person. They are entitled to personhood. They are entitled to legal status in this Nation. Of course, any time in the history of mankind when we have deemed somebody less than a full person, we have always lived to regret it, and we always said later on: Wasn't that a horrific episode in human history where somebody was treated less than a human? Now we are back at that old debate. People are of different minds. They are not of ill will toward anybody. Many are seeking cures to very difficult diseases, to very difficult problems and human maladies and saying: If we can only go here, if we can only research on human embryos that are just frozen; they are not going to come out of the Cryovac; they are going to stay frozen; if we can only do that, if we can just take an egg and fuse it with a cell from my body and create a clone just for a little period of time, we are going to be able to solve all these human maladies; we are going to solve cancer, and we are going to fix Parkinson's disease, and we are going to solve spinal cord injuries. Then, it comes back, back, back to the same old debate: What is the human embryo that is frozen? Is this a human embryo created by the cloning process? Is it a person or piece of property? People of good will differ on that division. It is an old debate, and I think the only place to stand is that this is a person and deserves our respect. That debate is renewed in this bioethics issue. We have been going at it about 6 years now. In August of 2001, the President articulated a strategy of funding both embryonic stem cell research and adult and cord blood research, funding both of them. We have since that time funded embryonic stem cell research to the tune of half a billion dollars, $500 million. So this isn't something people can say we haven't done. We have. Those are Federal funds. No private or State money is included in that money. This is just Federal money, half a billion dollars. When we started this debate 6 years ago, I stated that for us to research on young human beings is illegal under our law, immoral under our rationale, under our legal system and, really, the law we know in our hearts and unnecessary because we have another way. We can go through adult stem cell work, we can go through cord blood work, and we can come at conclusions that will be successful in treating these human maladies. The illegal and immoral remain today. We do not allow people to research on the youngest of human beings. It is immoral how you treat the youngest of human beings because if you destroy me at that stage of embryo, I never get to become a full-scale human and realize the potential I have or other people have. Today, I want to emphasize the unnecessary part of this debate. When we started this debate in 2000, they said there was a lot of promise with adult cord blood, but we don't know if you are right. We actually think we are going to be able to come up with conclusions and solutions using embryonic stem cells or cloning, but you can't come up with them using adult stem cells. There is not enough malleability. They are not what they call in the terminology, pluripotent. In other words, if it is a nerve adult stem cell, it can't make bone. It can't make fat tissue. It turns out there is a lot more pluripotency or plasticity to these adult stem cells than originally thought, to the point where we have 70 peer-reviewed publications, treating 70--we just celebrated this 2 weeks ago--70 different human maladies with adult stem cells or cord blood. My good news today is on the illegal, immoral, and unnecessary, we now have a lot of information on the unnecessary side of this debate so that we can go forward full scale in saying we are going to successfully treat these human maladies, and we have 70 treatment areas. Some of these are nothing short of miraculous. I have a very busy chart here, but that is because this is very busy subject. This is a chart indicating 70 current human--these are not animals--human clinical applications using adult stem cells today. These are the various areas: anemias, autoimmune diseases, bladder diseases. We now have people growing bladders from their own stem cells, taking them out of the body--I believe this is a Florida researcher--putting them on a skeleton and then growing artificial bladders so that people, instead of having pouches on their side, can now have their own bladder grown. This is really taking place. Cancers, cardiovascular: I want to talk about a group having their hearts regenerated by their own stem cells, but will save that for another day. Immune deficiencies, liver diseases, neural degenerative diseases, including spinal cord injuries--I will talk about a specific example today: a young lady walking again with the use of braces. Ocular, wounds and injuries, and metabolic disorders: Those are the general categories that I want to put forward to show the unnecessary side of embryonic stem cells. This is a good news topic with which we can move forward. I have been challenged by some of my colleagues about the scientists who oppose embryonic stem cell research. I have submitted a list of 57 scientists and doctors for the Record in a previous speech who oppose destructive human embryonic stem cell research--oppose it. Embryonic stem cell research is not the right way to go, as a moral issue, for a number of reasons, but there are also a number of reasons why it is unnecessary for us to move forward in this particular category. There is also the problem--and we saw this on the use of tissues from aborted fetuses, the fetal tissue debate, and, unfortunately, when you use these young stem cells, embryonic stem cells, they tend to form tumors. Embryonic stem cells are very fast-growing, and they form tumors instead of the type of tissue we want. They too frequently are uncontrollable, and they will form tumors. That continues to be the problem in that particular area. I want to point out this chart to my colleagues regarding this issue. It is not necessary. It is unnecessary for us to do embryonic or cloning research. On the moral issue, it is illegal. But it is also unnecessary because we are getting human treatments to the very things my colleagues said that we needed to do embryonic stem cell research for and that they say we needed to do human cloning to get all of these cures. I am saying it is not necessary. We don't have to go that route, because we are getting the treatments using this ethical route. So we have this big ethical debate and quagmire, and we have a legitimate route with adult stem cells where we are getting successful treatments for people. Why would we engage in and go the unethical route when we have this big debate and divide? Why would we not just go very aggressively where we are getting human clinical trials with adult stem cells, especially when we are not getting any in the embryonic area? Why wouldn't you fully engage that and say, Well, OK, then we don't have to engage the moral debate. We don't have to say somebody is subhuman and to get to a point in our research. We can say we have a legitimate route to go. Now I want to talk about the good news highlights here. I want to put up some real patient stories for my colleagues. We had a press conference last week where we had five individuals independently treated with adult stem cells or with their cord blood. This is umbilical cord blood from mother-child that has been saved and preserved and people are being treated successfully in these areas. I want to put up a picture of Ryan Schneider from Batavia, IL. This is a miraculous story. A beautiful Christmas picture you can see here. It is a picture of him last Christmas, taken just 10 weeks after Ryan's stem cell treatment. There is already a noticeable improvement that he has. This is a young man who has an incredible story. I met him last week and his parents, and I want to say God bless him to him and his parents who really fought through a tough problem of cerebral palsy with him. His medical problems began at birth. His parents, Mary and Steve, noticed that he was having difficulty with feedings. He was falling behind in his motor skills. His mother is a very sensible woman. She heard the usual arguments of, ``Well, every kid is different, let's wait and see.'' But based on her experience, including raising Ryan's older sister, Katie, his mother knew that something wasn't right. By the age of 2 he only had two words and he was not gaining weight at all. She writes: Pointing, whining, and screaming were his only method of communication. I had him evaluated through the early intervention program and he started speech therapy. So she starts working. Nine months later he had only gained 1 pound, and after he started speech therapy he spoke only 40 words with no sentence structure, and only close family understood the words. His upper body strength was weakening. His hands were in fists most of the time. It hurt him to straighten out his hands and arms. It is the little things that only a parent would notice that set the bells off ringing. I presented these concerns to Ryan's pediatrician who referred us to a neurologist. Having five children, I can just see this developing, and I can see a mother looking at this child and knowing something is not quite right here. On July 21, 2005, we got the diagnosis of cerebral palsy. My husband and I felt like we had been punched in the stomach. Who wouldn't, as a parent. Ryan Schneider was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, a disease that affects close to half a million Americans. Mayoclinic.com describes cerebral palsy as: a general term describing a general group of disorders which affects the child's ability to coordinate body and movement. These disorders are caused by damage to a child's brain early in the course of development. Damage can occur during fetal development, during the birth process, or during the first few months after birth. The group of disorders range from mild to severe. Physical signs of cerebral palsy includes weakness and floppiness of muscles, flaccidity, and rigidity. In some cases neurological disorders such as mental retardation or seizures also occur in children with cerebral palsy. This doesn't sound like something you would want to confront in your family. Mayoclinic.com also cites that it is not curable--is not curable. Well, the Schneider family has a story to tell today. Thanks to their persistence and the work of Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg at Duke University, young Ryan has a new outlook on life. Thanks to the amazing work of cord blood adult stem cells. Ryan's mother, on the birth of Ryan, saved the cord blood. That is something I would urge anybody who is watching or thinking about it, to save the cord blood. This is a valuable asset. Ms. Schneider continues about what she did: The light went on the morning following Ryan's diagnosis. I sat up in bed, looked at my husband and said, the doctor said brain injury. We saved his cord blood. I wonder if they are using it to treat cerebral palsy. This is the day after. The mother sits up in bed: We saved it. What can we do? After days of net researching and many phone calls to leading researchers in stem cell therapy, I found very little hope or information and a lot of, ``No, I won't do the transfusion.'' No one would give my son his own cord blood. You can get donated blood products from strangers in time for surgery or trauma. This is absurd. I called Dr. Harris at the cord blood bank where Ryan's stem cells were banked. He suggested I get in touch with Dr. Kurtzberg at Duke University. I have had Dr. Kurtzberg in to testify--an amazing lady, great stories, and she works with these impossible cases. Remember, cerebral palsy was incurable. Was--was incurable. She agreed to do the transfusion, and the transfusion took place on October 11, 2005. Given this opportunity, I set up a protocol system of my own. Pre- and post-infusion evaluations and progress monitoring is being done by Easter Seals. I requested extensive metabolic and chromosomal blood work to be done to rule out any other possibilities with his pediatrician. So this is a mother working with this doctor saying, OK, we are going to really measure it and see if this is what is happening. Ryan's mother continues: My thought was if this works for Ryan, it could change his life and the lives of many other children in the future. Although my efforts were applauded, this should not be the job of a parent, but of the medical community and the Federal Government to allocate research dollars. Until this is a proven treatment, insurance companies typically will deny benefits, leaving a huge financial burden on the family and precious few places to receive hope. Six months post-infusion, the progress Ryan has made is more than remarkable; it is phenomenal. He is no longer in need of any physical or observational therapy, as his dexterity in his hands and arms has returned. His feeding issues are gone--were gone within 30 days. He is now at a normal rate of growth. He speaks clearly for a 3 year old, and he does so in sentences. His vocabulary is on target and age appropriate, and he is totally engaged in his surroundings. His pediatrician, neurologist, behavioral psychologist, Easter Seals OT, physical therapist and the feeding clinic are in agreement that these changes have occurred post cord blood transfusion. They can offer us no other explanation, yet we must all err on the side of caution, preventing false hope until proper research is completed. So you basically see a mother looking for any researcher in the country who will do this. When I talked to the mother last week, she said Dr. Kurtzberg said to her, Yes, I will do the transfusion. The worst thing that can happen here is nothing. This is his own cord blood. The worst thing that can happen is nothing. But without it, he is going the wrong way. Let's try it. The OB-GYN that delivered Ryan and collected his cord blood asked me, ``What in the world made you think of that? It is wonderful and very exciting news.'' I got that kind of reaction from the other doctors in Ryan's case and thought, ``How could I not think of it?'' When your child is in trouble, you use all available resources to fix the situation to the best of your ability. All of Ryan's doctors are given updates and progress reports as they come. I have come in contact with Dr. Mindy Lipson-Aisen, the National Director of the United Cerebral Palsy Foundation. She would like to see a study begin with this treatment and has offered a grant to make that happen. The Easter Seals Dupage have been very accommodating with Ryan's needs. Based on conversation with them, I am sure that additional funding would be available. Clearly, more adult stem cell work in this area is something that we need to do, with half a million CP patients in the country and more coming all the time. Why not head this off? We owe our thanks to the mice and men that helped us get this far, but it is not about them, it is the children and others that may benefit. The resource and treatment accessibility needs to be changed. Funding research for children in need who have access to their cord blood in either a private or public bank will be a low-risk, high- yield and ethical place to start. Ryan and others should not be referred to as an anecdotal response as a society. We all deserve better than that. Part of my point in mentioning Ryan's story is that as we divert resources from these areas that are working in adult cord blood research and putting half a billion dollars in very speculative, embryonic stem cell research that is still producing tumors, or even in more speculative cloning research, kids like Ryan don't get the treatment from a protocol that has been developed and is actually working. So why do we take a half a billion dollars from Ryan to put it over here in this speculative area that has moral questions as well, and kids like Ryan don't get treatment or we don't develop a protocol or we don't expand it across the country? What sense does that make that we would do that? For the sake of research? I am for research, but I am more for treating kids like Ryan and getting more of them cured from CP and other diseases. Funding adult stem cells which are working is more important than saying, OK, we are going to prove that something doesn't work over here. We are going to prove that this doesn't work with embryonic stem cells or we are going to prove that this doesn't work with cloning when I could instead be really treating a bunch of kids like Ryan. Why would we do that? Ryan was on the cover of The Hill newspaper last week flexing his muscles. His mother said his arms used to retract. Now he is on the front cover of The Hill, he has his arms outstretched, and he is showing his muscles like a good 3-year-old. His sister complains that he bugs her all the time, which to a parent is usually a very healthy sign that this is working. These are real people getting real treatments and real cures. I want to go now to an example that is another miraculous example of a treatment area. I am only giving you two stories of the five that were in last week, and these are only two areas in the 70 that are getting treated with adult cord blood. This is Jacki Rabon, a paraplegic, an amazing case and amazing young lady. She lives in central Illinois. I have a picture of Jacki here. This is a picture after her adult stem cell treatment. I want to give you the background on her. Jacki Rabon is an 18-year-old paraplegic. She was on Capitol Hill last week with her mother and sister touting adult stem cell advances in the area of spinal cord injuries. Three years ago, Jacki was a very active 16-year-old who played volleyball in school, and was an outstanding player. In fact, she had hopes of going to college on a volleyball scholarship. All that changed. She was riding in an SUV on a gravel road when it flipped multiple times. She landed on her back on that country road. She spent the next month in the hospital. Jacki writes: That day changed my outlook. I was living a nightmare after this tragedy. I really thought my life was over. I couldn't imagine not playing volleyball anymore, jumping on my trampoline with my young nephew, chasing after my niece, or just taking a walk around my small community. Not only does something like this change the victim, but it also seriously disrupts and affects your family. I am a paraplegic with no feeling below the belly button. I had to learn to become independent again; to dress, bathe, transfer from place to place, and take care of my personal hygiene and toiletry issues. It was so difficult, and I struggled with these once simple tasks. After I accomplished these, I was released and allowed to come home. I was simply told, You will never walk again. That was my prognosis. A 16-year-old paraplegic, an accident, ``You will never walk again.'' Jacki continues: I got back to school a few months later and that was another adjustment. Everything looks and works differently when you are sitting in a wheelchair. I had to deal with a lot of depression and sadness, but I tried to continue with my life the best that I could. I truly believe that my faith got me through. If it wasn't for this amazing love of God, my strong will and determination, I don't know if I could have proceeded with what my life had become. But I have great determination along with the comforting faith and I didn't intend on giving up that easily. I wanted to give life another opportunity with my new ``lifestyle.'' I would like to pause in the telling of Jacki's story for just a moment. I have asked my colleagues to imagine what goes through the mind of a 16-year-old in this predicament. Beyond the physical pain, try to imagine the mental anguish. You have your life in front of you-- endless opportunities in America--and it is taken up in a snap, in an accident--gone. You wake up one morning; all is normal. You get up and you brush your teeth, put on your clothes; you go for a jog and continue on with the day. The next morning you wake up and you cannot move, cannot brush your teeth, cannot put on your clothes or go for a jog. Your entire life has changed. You desperately long for a cure. You would follow almost anyone or believe almost any story if it seemed credible, if it might produce a cure, if the person had the right credentials and respect. Unfortunately, some people are putting forward stories and saying we are going to cure this with embryonic stem cells or human cloning, but these areas are not working. You hear, ``If only we have more Federal research money it will work.'' But I want to point out here, in Jacki's particular case, that she had a place to go and an area to try. I want to point out this work was done by a Portuguese doctor, Dr. Lima, and talk to you about Jacki finding Dr. Lima in Portugal and what happened. Jacki continued, after going through this despair and depression. She writes this. My world changed again in the fall of 2004. My pastor was watching a PBS show when the special called ``The Miracle Cell'' was aired. It was about a procedure called ``Olfactory Mucosa Transplantation'', being done in Portugal by Dr. Carlos Lima. It involved removing tissue from a patient's olfactory sinus area and transplanting it into the spinal cord at the initial injury site. My pastor called the house and urged us to turn on the show. We did and were glued to the story. I listened to amazing recovery of returned sensation and even the ability to walk again with continued rehab from others after having this surgery. I remember thinking, ``There's my chance!'' I knew I wanted to pursue this possibility for me. My mom and I started researching this procedure on the Internet and collected as much information as we could. We discovered a Spinal Cord Injury Institute getting ready to open in Detroit, Michigan that summer. This institute was closely associated with Dr. Lima. We called to see if we could get an appointment to go and meet Dr. Steve Hinderer and asked about the procedure in depth and inquire about my chances of getting it done. I did go to Detroit and was told that I could well be a good candidate. I was given the guidelines and criteria for having this done. After many months of additional testing, x- rays, etc. I was accepted. This was very exhilarating for me. I had read about the success stories of the individuals that have gone before me. Their various success stories gave me so much hope!! I had so much support from my family, friends, church, community and surrounding areas to raise the $50,000.00, needed to have this surgery. Without this overwhelming support I could not have gone forward with this incredible opportunity. I went to Portugal in October 2005. I had the procedure done on October 29th. My experience in Portugal was not all pleasant. My mom and I had to deal with the language barrier and the unfamiliar culture. I returned to the states on November 5th. I rested at home for a few weeks, then went to Detroit to the Institute for aggressive rehab. Rehab was very tiring and indeed very aggressive. It was an exhausting experience but a very rewarding one. It was there that I took my first steps on the parallel bars. I was up!!! My progress since undergoing this surgery has been amazing!! I have a lot of hip movement, some tingling and heaviness in my legs. I have continued with my rehab regimen at home. I have leg braces that were fitted to me. I can walk on parallel bars and have begun walking with a walker. I am up on my feet again!!!! That's the most satisfying feeling. Unless you have been confined in a wheelchair for an extended amount of time, you can't really know how rewarding it is to be standing again. This brings me to the ongoing debate over adult stem cell research. I did not think a lot about this issue before the accident but now it has sparked a great interest within me. First, I am very much against embryonic stem cell research and advancement. I do not support this aspect at all. The killing of human life is appalling to me. But with adult stem cell and non-embryonic stem cell research I have become an advocate. My personal experience with adult stem cell transplantation should awaken the United States to the unlimited possibilities. This technique is simply ``your body healing itself''. Medical research in the United States has always been respected and admired for the advances toward cure for cancer, arthritis treatments and medication, heart disease and other well-known diseases and ailments. But when it comes to spinal cord injuries, the U.S. is very much in the negative category. We as taxpayers pay more money in the daily care of a spinal cord injury victim than we do on a cure. Now why is that???? The medical society treats the injury at the onset, then teaches the individual to live in a wheelchair and function accordingly. Then they are sent home and told, ``You will never walk again''. I experienced that first hand. But I am walking again. I have goals of walking by the end of the year with my braces and crutches. This was made possible by the procedure in Portugal and aggressive rehab. But I had to leave the comfort of my home and country and travel to a foreign area to get this done. Now that is sad, isn't it? This tragedy that happened to me can happen to anyone. It could be your wife, husband, son, daughter or friend. What would you want for them? Simply a statement, ``You'll never walk again'' or ``Never give up hope--there is a better option for you.'' Wake up, United States!!!! We are missing out. Let's look at the issue in a more personal level--I can walk again. Sincerely, Jacki Rabon, Waverly, IL. Jacki was up last week. She now has feeling in her hips. She is out of the wheelchair. She can walk with braces. She needs more of these treatments. My point in saying this, why are we sending her to Portugal to do this procedure when this should be done in the United States and researched in the United States? She is probably going to need more of these treatments to get the spinal cord to fully fuse. They take these cells out of the base of the nose, grow them, put them right in the spinal cord area where it has broken, and they start to knit the spinal cord back together. But it is probably not going to be just one treatment. It is probably going be multiple treatments. She had to do fundraising to raise $50,000 to go overseas to do this. It was not covered by an insurance company. Why wouldn't we develop protocols here to get this done with adult stem cells instead of diverting research money into speculative areas like embryonic stem cells and human cloning? We should put funding into areas to help people like Jacki. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a table on the level of funding we have done on embryonic and nonembryonic areas.

Mr. BROWNBACK

Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Nevada, the Democratic leader, for his last statement of willingness to appoint conferees and use other vehicles that will not have the blue slip problem on the House side. Comprehensive immigration reform is a critical and most important piece of legislation we will pass in conference if we can get it done. I appreciate my colleague doing that. It is a tough topic. He has been willing to work with us along the way, not without difficulties at different steps. I really appreciate his willingness to work on such a difficult topic with us.