David Weldon: “I want to thank him for the support and assistance provided me and all of the others involved in passing the ban on…”

“I want to thank him for the support and assistance provided me and all of the others involved in passing the ban on human cloning out of the House of Representatives. The gentleman's involvement was extremely helpful. I also want to thank the gentleman for making arrangements for this Special Order. We continue to await action from the other body on this issue. As we all know, the bill to ban human cloning, which I had authored along with my colleague the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Stupak), a Democrat, passed the House of Representatives now almost a year ago. It was July of 2001 that it passed. I just want to point out that that bill passed the House of Representatives by a 100-vote margin, I think it was 63 Democrats voting for it, and about 20 Republicans voting against it, so this is clearly not a Republican versus Democrat issue. It passed overwhelmingly, with a very, very clear bipartisan vote. I just want to underscore that the bill as it passed the House does not ban stem cell research. There are a lot of people that confuse these issues. I will admit they are complicated. I have a background in medicine and science, and it is easy for me to follow these things; but for lay people, it is very, very hard to sort out when are we talking about stem cell research and when we are talking about human cloning. Also, the bill does not ban cloning tissues; it does not ban animal cloning.”