Louise Slaughter: “I very much want to rise and join my colleagues in opposition to this rule and to the underlying bill. Mr. Speaker, why…”

“I very much want to rise and join my colleagues in opposition to this rule and to the underlying bill. Mr. Speaker, why would Members of Congress want to turn doctors into criminals and treat medical researchers like outlaws? With all the grave issues facing America that continue to go unaddressed by this body, our broken health care system, a lack of education funding, fears of Social Security insolvency and a soaring economy, why are we spending time criminalizing promising medical research and threatening to send doctors to jail for 10 years? This bill does not regulate the way that Federal funds are spent on medical research. It makes medical research or treatments using therapeutic cloning a Federal crime. The role of our government is to provide research achievements and to provide incubators for medical and scientific breakthroughs. It is not our job to criminalize good doctors or to force leaders in medical research to abandon promising techniques. According to the National Institutes of Health, which advises us on a daily basis, therapeutic cloning could provide treatments for Parkinson's disease, chronic heart failure, in-stage kidney disease, liver failure, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis, severe burns, spinal cord injuries, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, lupus, heart damage, cancer, paralyzed limbs, and Lou Gehrig's disease.”