Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007

STEM CELL RESEARCH ENHANCEMENT ACT OF 2007 -- (House of Representatives - January 11, 2007)

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Mr. SESTAK. I thank the gentlewoman from Colorado for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this bill, H.R. 3. While I am about to talk to a personal story, the issue of stem cell research is not just personal, it is much more than that.

A year and a half ago, I retired from the U.S. Navy as my then-4-year-old daughter, Alex, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. She is here today thanks to the wonderful medical treatment that she received from our Nation's doctors and nurses including high-dose chemotherapy with stem cell infusion.

The medical coverage I received from our country as a military member allowed my daughter to receive the best care it had to offer, the care every American child should have access to. And that is why I ask to speak to this bill today above all others.

The best of medical care today may not be good enough for tomorrow. Take a case such as my daughter's: there is a chance that brain tissue may be harmed by the very treatments intended to save young lives.

Why would we preclude the medical promise that stem cell research offers for tomorrow's recuperative treatment or cure, not just for my daughter, but for all those Americans whose lives are inflicted by serious disease, or who now pass prematurely from us when they might not?

Embryonic stem cell research may mean that every day 3,000 of our loved ones affected by Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, or diabetes or spinal cord injury might have the quality and the full time of life they would not otherwise have.

I thought about life every day as I lived in the pediatric oncology ward at Children's Hospital, just down the street from here. I always wondered if the children there would have a chance to experience life to its fullest.

I understand debates, and I respect those couched in moral terms; but when the bargain we are offered is the opportunity that a child might live, how can we not strike that bargain?

I would hope that we would not let young or old lives be shortened by the worst of plagues, which is, ``what might have been' for them. For the promise of life, its quality, is the congressional tasking we are most charged with to promote the general welfare. I urge all my colleagues to support this bill.

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