Chris Murphy: “Leon Koss said that good things men do can be made complete only by the things they refuse to do. Now I have no doubts…”

“Leon Koss said that good things men do can be made complete only by the things they refuse to do. Now I have no doubts about the compassion and convictions of both sides on this issue, but I take issue with the direction of their convictions, because in the end a life without a name is still a life. Words cannot take away that this is a life. By calling them ``discarded'' or ``unwanted'' embryos does not take away that they are still lives. While some may see this as scientific efforts of ingenuity and future Nobel Prize work, it does not take away the lethality of this research. Further, let me state that President Clinton's Bioethics Council stated: ``Embryos deserve respect as a form of human life.'' In 1999 the council said: ``Funding of embryonic stem cell research should be done only if there are no alternatives.'' The research that we have reviewed today and has been reviewed by this Congress in the past when these amendments have been looked upon over the last decade, is that there is still no alternative in the sense that the research is showing that cord blood stem cell research and adult stem cell research is where the results are found. {time} 1600 I have as much compassion as anybody. I have worked with developmentally disabled kids all my professional life and would love to see cures for them, but I want to see the funding go in the direction where we can see success, where that direction has been achieved and we will continue to see that.…”