Stem Ce;; Research
Floor Speech
STEM CELL RESEARCH -- (Senate - June 20, 2007)
Mr. REID. Mr. President, yesterday, a few feet out of this Chamber, I had the opportunity to meet with three young ladies from Nevada. Megan Christensen is 14 years old; Anna Ressel, from Sparks, 13 years old; and Jordan Exber, a 14-year-old from Las Vegas.
These girls were here to present me with a little award as a result of work I have done on juvenile diabetes. I was representative of many people who have worked on the issue. But the reason I mention this is not any award that was given to me or any of the other Senators but the plight of these young ladies.
One of the girls was determined to have diabetes 3 months ago--a beautiful child, Jordan, from Las Vegas. They prepared a book for me: 2007, Children's Congress.''
Among other things, one of the pictures in this is a bunch of syringes. Look at this. I can't count them. This is 1 week's picking and poking at this young lady's body that she has to go through because of diabetes.
Type 1 juvenile diabetes is a chronic disease and for the child with type 1 diabetes, the pancreas does not produce insulin, a hormone necessary to sustain life. Without insulin the sugar in the blood can't be used. It builds up in the bloodstream, even though the body is starved for energy. A person with type 1 diabetes must take one or more injections of insulin daily to stay alive.
She has written here: I take 42 shots, at least, every week. This does not count the testing,'' to find out what her blood sugar levels are; 42 a week.
The reason I mention this is these young and beautiful children were here to talk about something the President is
going to do today--veto stem cell research legislation. What a shame. Last year, the Republican-controlled House and Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill to open up hope for these young ladies.
To indicate this is not just something that is important for Nevada, they had there a girl from Australia. A teenager from Australia was here to indicate this is an international problem. We in America, with the genius we have here--out of the top 142 universities in the world, we have 129 of them in America. One of the best, of course, is in the State of the Presiding Officer--Johns Hopkins. Research is going on there. Stem cell research should be going on there, and it is not.
It was a happy day for all of us when the bill passed the House and the Senate. It was a day Democrats and Republicans put politics and partisanship aside to do the right thing for the American people. Yet when we sent this historic bill to the President's desk, he vetoed it. It was his first veto of his Presidency.
With the health and hope of literally millions of Americans hanging in the balance, he vetoed the bill. It was the first veto, I repeat, of his administration.
A year passed. The best scientists continued to work with one hand tied behind their backs. I indicated 129 great universities in America, the best universities in the world, are not allowed to do this. Countless millions of Americans have been diagnosed with dread diseases, thousands and thousands, with Parkinson's, spinal cord injuries, heart disease. A year has passed, but today we are told the President plans to veto the stem cell bill again.
These children suffer from diabetes. They were here to help get this bill passed.
When we sent the bill to the President 2 weeks ago, Speaker Pelosi and I were joined by 10-year-old Toni Bethea, who lives in the District of Columbia and suffers from diabetes, and Allison Howard, who suffers from Rett Syndrome--beautiful children, one of them extremely ill. They deserve hope, just like these girls from Las Vegas, Sparks, Reno, from Australia.
President Bush has indicated that he would not give them any hope. He is going to veto the bill, we are told. He would not listen to the more than 500 leading organizations who support this bill, the American Association of Retired Persons, AARP, the American Medical Association, the American Diabetes Association, more than 500 organizations. He would not listen to 80 Nobel laureates who have said this is essential. He would not listen to his own Director--I am talking about President Bush--his own Director of the National Institutes of Health, who supports embryonic stem cell research. He is not listening to the majority of the American people. This proposal is supported by more than 80 percent of the American public. They call for stem cell research.
This narrow ideology that has guided this administration, that has us in this intractable war in Iraq, that has us losing standing in the world community, having 47 million Americans with no health care and no plan coming from the White House to improve that--a program that is lacking in keeping our children in school. On the environment, global warming is taking place. It is being ignored by this White House. This, a hope for millions--stem cell research--indicates this narrow ideology is wrong, and it is preventing the curing of diseases, the prevention of diseases. We deserve better. We are a nation of endless compassion and unlimited ingenuity. Megan, Anna, Jordan, Toni, and Allison deserve to know we are a better country than this narrow ideology.
President Bush's veto is a setback, but we are going to continue to give hope to these children and the American people.
Source