Sam Brownback: “I wish to resume the discussion on embryonic stem cell research. I wish to resume the discussion on adult stem cell…”

“I wish to resume the discussion on embryonic stem cell research. I wish to resume the discussion on adult stem cell successes and why we should not move forward on destroying more human life for the purposes of research. I wish to start out with a simple picture, a picture of one child, Hannah. She was a frozen embryo. I wish to just go through this briefly because we talk about frozen embryos as though this is something you can discard and there is really no significance here, or if there is, it is minimal, it is not really human, it is just something that is sitting there in a frozen state and we should just research on this person. I note this because Hannah was a frozen embryo. She was adopted. She was implanted. Then here we are looking at her in April of 2001 at age 28 months. I met Hannah. She has been in my office. She is a bright, young, vivacious girl. I point out that she starts out as what we are talking about researching on here--she starts out being frozen, alive, adopted as an embryo, arrives in a clinic, is thawed, implantated, and develops a heartbeat. Here is a picture of her at 21 weeks. We can see her, and we can see the development. The reason I point this out, and I guess it should be obvious to everybody, but what we are talking about is something in embryology books that is defined as human. It is defined as a person with a 46- chromosomes. It is defined as a unique person who will never be recreated.”