Political Quotes

“I rise to merely point out to the distinguished chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner), that he may be over-reliant on adult stem cells as a viable alternative to embryonic stem cells, and I would like to explain why. A National Institute of Health study examined the potential of adult and embryonic stem cells for curing disease, and they found that the embryonic stem cells have important advantages over adult stem cells. The embryonic stem cells can develop into many more different types of cells. They can potentially replace any cell in the human body. Adult stem cells, however, are not as flexible as embryonic ones. They cannot develop into many different types of cells. They cannot be duplicated in the same quantities in the laboratory. They are difficult and dangerous sometimes to extract from an adult patient. For instance, obtaining adult brain stem cells could require life-threatening surgery. So the NIH found in its study that therapeutic cloning would allow us to create stem cell medical treatments that would not be rejected by the patient's immune system, because they have the patient's own DNA.”