Political Quotes

“Let's get a handle on exactly what this amendment does. This amendment says that we are going to take one of the most controversial areas of research--controversial regarding the ethics of the research--and we are going to say the Federal Government can't determine whether it is ethical. Madam Chair, we have a construct for this. This construct was developed by Mr. Waxman two decades ago in a piece of statute signed by President Clinton that said that when you submit research for funding to the HHS Department, and it is a topic around which there are ethical questions--and there are ethical questions--that the Secretary can choose to seat a panel, not a sham panel, but a panel that consists of attorneys, ethicists, practicing physicians, theologians, and scientists with substantial accomplishments in biomedical and behavioral research. That doesn't sound too sham to me. It is a panel that is going to review it because, Madam Chair, without that, the only review this gets with regard to, for instance, an institutional review board is at the institution that stands to gain the funding when the project is funded. It is because of that conflict of interest that the Congress thoughtfully said, in statute, that we ought to have a mechanism to consider the ethics. Madam Chair, we are going to hear about all kinds of things done with fetal tissue. Yes, they were done decades and decades ago. Those vaccines were done on cell lines that have been around for a long time.…”