Thomas Coburn

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. They cannot disagree. It has only been done for 3 months, and it is successful. There have been no successful embryonic cells taken from the duct of the pancreas of children with diabetes, converted into cells, and have in fact cured their diabetes.

Mr. COBURN. For 3 months is all we know. I don't know the numbers. I think it is eight or nine. This protocol is being done in Europe at the present time.

Mr. COBURN. No, it is not being done in the United States.

Mr. COBURN. They have been published in peer-reviewed articles. I would be happy to submit them for the Record.

Mr. COBURN. I thank the Senator for allowing me to ask those questions.

Mr. COBURN. Here is the key point that needs to be made in this debate: If you use your own cells, you will not have tumors, you will not have teratomas, and you will not have rejection. If you use embryonic stem cells, you will have tumors, you will have teratomas, and you will have rejection. That is what we know. That is why I, as a scientist, have not raised the life issue here once, but I am adamantly pro-life. I believe the science is so far ahead of this debate. When everyone knows what is really going on in terms of research, they are going to want the dollars put into the stem cells, both in terms of dedifferentiation--we know we can differentiate cells backward to make them pluripotent--and also to isolate cells from our own human body to use back on us. That is an important part of the debate.

Mr. COBURN. I inquire of the Chair, under the previous order, if the majority is not here, who assumes control of the time?

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, it is my understanding that Senator Frist has this time. He has advised me I can use the time until he arrives.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, Senator Brownback has graciously allowed me to take 10 minutes of his time. I would like to do that at this time. First of all, I would like to set the record straight: the United States remains the world's leader of published stem cell articles and human embryonic stem cell articles. Specifically, it was April 6 of this year when that statement was made. From 1998 through the end of 2005, the United States published 46 percent of all papers published worldwide--by far the single largest proportion. The remaining 54 percent was divided among 17 other countries. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the latest peer review articles that have been brought up to date for this year. This is about 15 pages long, and it has multiple entries. For every disease that has been mentioned on the Senate floor by those supporting the embryonic stem cell research, there are treatments ongoing today using adult stem cells.

Mr. COBURN. I will spend a few minutes. This is a very emotional debate for every family in this country. Every family in this country has someone who, in fact, has a disease that will be impacted in the future by research that is ongoing in terms of stem cell research. I make a couple of points. We have heard today a couple of very strong statements that are highly inaccurate. One is that the only way you will cure this is with embryonic stem cells. No one knows that. As a matter of fact, most of the cures in science have come not by what we thought was going to happen but by what happened that surprised us. That is not true. No. 2, there is no ban at the present time on research in this country on embryonic stem cells. What there is a ban on is using additional Federal funds to create additional stem cells, but additional stem cells can be created outside of the Government. The Senator from South Dakota created a false choice. The false choice is not incineration. There are 400,000 embryos that are frozen in this country today; 93 percent of those the parents want to save for themselves. So that leaves us a smaller portion. If you look at the numbers, when you thaw embryos, you have a 50-percent wastage, you lose 50 percent of them. The false choice Senator Johnson put forward was this: they either get burned up or they get used for embryonic stem cell research. This last week, the 108th baby was born through this Operation Snowflake--which is adopted embryos--so that is not the only choice. The other thing is, if everyone will recognize, in the fertility community in this country, that in Europe, they do not have a problem with excess embryos. We overdo it in this country in terms of creating embryos for fertility clinics. We create about four times as many obstetrician and fertility specialists as the rest of the world. The choice is not incinerate or use for embryonic stem cell research. The majority leader has arrived. I yield my time.

Mr. COBURN. If you do not have a tumor, I would just as soon have a teratoma as cancer.

Mr. COBURN. No. The Senator alluded to the fact that there is a gold standard of whether an embryonic stem cell is pluripotent or whether it produces a teratoma. That means it has components of the three layers of an embryo--exoderm, endoderm, and mesoderm--which create all the other tissues.

Mr. COBURN. It has. Most of the time teratoma.

Mr. COBURN. Now, why do we want multiple cell lines? It goes back to the issue I have been talking about all day. It is called tissue rejection. That is the wonder of adult stem cells and germ cell pluripotent stem cells versus embryonic. With embryonic, there is rejection because there is an allergy to the foreign tissue. It is called the HLA, histocompatibility complex. The only way around that, with fetal embryonic stem cells, is to clone yourself--the only way you will get around it. And it will only work well in women. Only if you clone yourself with your own egg do you avoid all the allergy implications of foreign tissue. So I think it is very important that we--it is OK to have this debate, but some of the claims we hear--we actually heard, and I know he did not mean this, Senator Specter talking about embryos injected into the pulp of the tooth to create a new set of teeth. He did not mean embryos. He meant pluripotent stem cells. But you do not want pluripotent. What you want is the epidermal stem cells that produce teeth in the first place. That is what is great about adult stem cells. We are going to be able to do that with adult stem cells. He also stated that embryonic stem cell research is outstripping all of the research. That is not true. It is not true at all. The vast majority of success in stem cells today lies not with embryonic stem cells, it lies with everything but embryonic stem cells. Now, I do not deny as a scientist that would be a wonderful area in which to work. There is lots unknown, and if you are a scientist today, and they say you can go to this area where there are all these areas where you can work and go and move and everything, it is a fun area of research. But it is loaded with hazards, just like the Senator from Kansas talked about, in terms of fetal tissue. The fact is, as we may someday learn how to turn on and turn off some of these cell lines, we do not know that yet. It is fine to perfect that in animals. It is not fine to perfect that in human clinical trials until we have that absolutely controlled. I do not have any trouble with what we are doing now, doing that in the private sector. But the question is, do we ask American taxpayers to use their money to destroy embryos--embryos for which there are 2 million people in the country who would love to adopt--do we ask them to destroy that with their tax money so we can do that research, even though it is occurring in the private sector at a far greater rate than it is in the public finance sector? So I think this really boils down to two questions: false choices and false promises. Let me outline them. The false promise is that only embryonic stem cells are going to solve the problem. It is not true. The second promise is we are going to get treatments, but we are not going to have to clone. You are going to have to clone if you are going to get treatments from embryonic stem cells. No. 3 is that adult stem cells and the pluripotent lines, as well as germ cell lines, will not be able to do what embryonic stem cells do. That is not proven anywhere in the scientific literature. That is a false promise. And No. 4 is the false promise issue that you cannot take adult stem cells and dedifferentiate, move backwards, to make them pluripotent, which we are seeing great science with an enzyme today called reversa. So those are the false promises that are out there. Now, there are four false choices, I believe. One is that there is no cure without embryonic stem cells. That, for sure, the evidence does not show. Another is that there will not be any research unless the Government pays for it. That is not true at all. The research is ongoing across the world in lots of areas without government research, and much more so in our country outside of government research. The third choice is that there is no life in an embryo. The fact is there is. Now, we had one Senator talk about the fact that they are going to be incinerated. If you talk about the 108 snowflake babies, the other 2 or 3 organizations that are adopting those, those children belie that fact that there is wonderful potential with the amount of demand. I am not saying that people who disagree with me on the ethical issues are bad or immoral people. I am saying I am not fighting this on ethical issues. I am fighting this on common sense, to see what things are happening and where we are seeing success and keeping up with the science. This debate in the Senate today is almost all about a year and a half old, as far as the science is concerned. I am talking about the new science. That is why I worked so hard to stay up on it. Finally, the promise is what every scientist knows, what every embryologist knows and every cell biologist knows, which is the mighty mitochondria. You cannot clone without having potential rejections unless you clone yourself with your own egg. There is different DNA in the mitochondria and the cell cytoplasm. I appreciate the spirit of the debate, and I hope the American people understand that it is not a false choice of no research versus some. The question is, Do we destroy unborn children? Two, do we give Federal dollars to do that? Thank you.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I want to spend a few minutes to kind of outline some of the statements that have been made. To just show how off base from reality some of them are, we heard there was a ban on embryonic stem cell research. There is no ban on embryonic stem cell research. As a matter of fact, the American people paid $40 million this last year on embryonic stem cell research--human, $40 million. So there is no ban. And considering that, there is a significant industry in the private sector that is researching it. We heard there are only 21 cell lines around, available. There are 400 cell lines available to scientists. There are 21 that Federal dollars can be spent on. So let's be real clear about what the real facts are. We also heard from the Senator from Florida that all medical researchers believe that embryonic stem cell research is the best hope. That could not be further from the truth. All of them do not. As a matter of fact, there is a large number who do not believe that way at all, based on not ethical concerns, on scientific concerns. They think it is not an acceptable way. We heard the Senator from Illinois saying that adult stem cells can only be collected in small quantities. That is not true at all. Many adult stem cell lines are reproductive of themselves. They are progenitor cells. They reproduce themselves. They come from amnionic membrane. They come from bone marrow. They come from endometrial lining. They come from placental tissue. They come from cord blood. They come from the spleen and the liver. They come from all sorts of areas in our body. We heard the Senator from California say we should let the scientists decide, not the Senators. Let's talk about Tuskegee. We let the scientists decide that one. I can think of two or three more instances in the 20th century when we let the scientists decide, and we went down a path that all of us were grieved over. When Senator Specter opened the debate today, there was, again, the assumption, in his first statement, that there is no embryonic fetal stem cell research. Not true. He also said none of the others have the potential of embryonic stem cell research. Well, I think there is a large body of science and a larger body of scientists who would disagree with that, especially as they study the new breakthroughs on germ cell pluripotent stem cells. I am going to ask to have printed in the Record a Rand study on the available numbers of human embryos, where in fact there are 400,000. But they outline, in great detail, that the fact is, a very small percentage of those are available for fetal research. They also outline in great detail so the American public can know that for every two embryos you are going to thaw, one of those two will die during the thawing process. So for this limited number, the most number of new cell lines, if you took all that are available today, would be less than what is available in the world today. It is 273 cell lines. So we have this great big demand, that we are going to get all this, but what we are going to get is less than what is out in the world today. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Rand study I referred to be printed in the Record.

Mr. COBURN. Three billion dollars. So there is no limitation at the present time.

Mr. COBURN. As a matter of fact, California passed, I think, Proposition 71: $500 million over the next 10 years in fetal stem cell research?

Mr. COBURN. Is there any prohibition in the United States today for private money to fund any type of fetal research, embryonic stem cell research?

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Monday, July 17, 2006, at 2:30 p.m. The purpose of this hearing is to receive testimony relating to the implementation of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 Provisions on Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Research and Development.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Monday, July 17, 2006, at 3 p.m. to hold nominations hearings.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that floor privileges be granted to Lesley Stewart of Senator Enzi's staff, and also Matt Blackburn of my staff for the duration of the stem cell debate.

Mr. COBURN

Mr. COBURN. The pending amendment is exactly as I described. It is an amendment that moves $1 million to the chief financial officer of Homeland Security so they will do the improper payments report.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I ask that amendment No. 4590 be reported.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I wish to respond to the chairman for a minute. I know this isn't going to solve the problem. This takes away the excuse for not doing proper payment analysis at the Department of Homeland Security. I know they are working hard in that regard. Mr. President, I note that the Senator from Alaska is here. I wonder if we might recall amendment No. 4585.

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I made an error in the number of the amendment I called up. I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be set aside and the true number be 4590 instead of 4589 and that the debate be considered with regard to No. 4590 rather than 4589.