Political Quotes

“I rise to speak, hopefully in part at least, to clarify where we are today in terms of a bill which is enormously important to all of us, to our families, to our children, to health care, to medical science. It is a bill that has been talked about in the context of cloning, of human cloning. For the past year-- not on the specifics of the bill--no, but there has been debate in the past year about whether or not today, in 1998, our society is ready to clone, or have mass production, of cloned human individuals. My distinguished colleague from Massachusetts just spoke to the importance of science, and of protecting scientific discoveries that will contribute to health care for the next generation. As a scientist, let me say at the outset that I could not agree more wholeheartedly with the commitment to not slowing down science in its efforts to improve health care. I say this, and I will qualify my statement by saying that we have to today consider the ethical implications that surround scientific discovery. We must consider the ethical ramifications that might--in certain very narrowly defined and specific arenas--tell us to stop, tell us to slow down before we jump or really leap ahead--into the unknown. This would have huge moral and ethical implications, not just in how we deal with each other as individuals, but also in terms of how we deal with each other globally.”