Lantos Applauds Congressional Colleagues' Foresight in Approving Expanded Stem Cell Research

Lantos Applauds Congressional Colleagues' Foresight in Approving Expanded Stem Cell Research

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Washington, DC -- Congressman Tom Lantos (D-San Francisco, San Mateo) today congratulated his House colleagues in showing bipartisan support for the Stem Cell Enhancement Act (H.R. 810), promoting the expansion of stem cell research using human embryos that would otherwise become medical waste, and directing federal authorities to develop standards for embryonic stem-cell research.

This vote represents a victory of the imaginative over the ideological, the rational over the reactionary," Lantos said. "I am proud that so many of my colleagues have crossed political and, in some cases, philosophical lines to support the expansion of much-needed medical science. This bill will help establish our country''s leadership in seeking treatments and cures through sophisticated stem cell research to fight disease in ways we cannot envision today."

Lantos also cheered the near-unanimous passage of a bill expanding research using umbilical cord blood stem cells, the Stem Cell Therapeutic and Research Act (H.R. 2520), saying it would complement the innovations that could come about through embryonic stem cell research.

Last year Lantos supported Proposition 71, the California ballot initiative establishing a stem cell research center regulated and funded by the state, creating a constitutional right to conduct stem cell research and prohibiting the center from conducting human reproductive cloning research. Earlier this month, San Francisco was selected to be the new research center's headquarters, enlarging the possibilities for biomedical science advances at a number of institutions, including UC San Francisco in Lantos' district.

http://lantos.house.gov/HoR/CA12/Newsroom/Press+Releases/2005/PR_050524_StemCell_Research2.htm