Chris Smith: “Every week, Mr. Speaker, medical journals, science periodicals, as well as the mainstream media, announce and report on…”

“Every week, Mr. Speaker, medical journals, science periodicals, as well as the mainstream media, announce and report on yet another promise and advance in adult stem cell research and clinical application. Unlike embryonic stem cell research, which has had a poor track record, adult stem cell therapies are not only the present, they are the future as well. Cord blood stem cells, for example, are healing and mitigating a myriad of diseases today and promising research that suggests better therapies to come. Let me just say a word about embryo destroying stem cell research. It has at least three strikes against it. First, it has an incredible propensity to morph into tumors. Secondly, if embryonic stem cells are ever successful and transplanted into humans, embryonic stem cells carry an enormous proclivity for rejection. And third, embryonic stem cell research requires the killing of human embryos. If it ever worked, the limited supply of so-called spare embryos, and that's a very offensive word, let me just say. Those children who have been adopted from cryogenic tanks--snowflake babies--are a witness against this idea of saying somehow there's a spare embryo. But just take that for what it is. If it ever worked, there would be a near insatiable demand for freshly killed human embryos.”