Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2006--Conference Report
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, ENVIRONMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2006--CONFERENCE REPORT -- (Senate - July 29, 2005)
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I thank the majority leader for his statement. I think it is extremely important that he has joined a bipartisan effort in the Senate to make progress on a critically important issue.
Senator Frist and I have our differences politically, but I respect and admire him very much, particularly in his humanitarian efforts as a doctor. All of us in the Senate know while we may be back home in our States, he is off in some of the poorest places in the world using his medical skill to save lives. It says a lot about him. It says a lot about his heart, as does his statement this morning.
The fact he would come out and suggest that we need to move forward in stem cell research is going to give new hope to people who absolutely count on medical research for their future and for the life and well-being of members of their families.
I have had roundtable discussions in my State. I have invited people who are suffering from diabetes, Parkinson's, Lou Gehrig's disease, and from spinal cord injuries. They have all come forward to tell me how critically important stem cell research could be to making their lives whole and better.
Senator Frist's decision today will move us toward a goal, a very important goal of establishing good lines for pursuing this research. The Castle-Degette bill, which comes from the House of Representatives, provides a conscience clause. It says neither the sperm nor egg donor can be asked to give up anything they put into the in vitro process without their consent. There must be a conscience clause included in this process. I agree with that.
We also must establish that we are opposed to human cloning, which I am, and I don't know of any Senator who disagrees. Human cloning is wrong, and we must draw strict ethical guidelines to make sure we do not cross that line.
Also, we never want to see the commercialization of this process. This is about scientific research. It is not about who is going to make a profit, and the Castle-Degette bill is very explicit in that regard.
My colleague from Kansas raises an important point. It is one he and I can debate and it can be debated for centuries about when life begins. I am not sure we will ever come to the same conclusion, but it is important we talk about it.
The thing that troubles me about this debate is that those who oppose stem cell research apparently are not prepared to criminalize in vitro fertilization. They are prepared to allow the process to move forward knowing full well in the ordinary course of events in the laboratory, there will be stem cells that cannot be used to impregnate the woman who is seeking to have a baby.
Mr. BROWNBACK. Will my colleague yield for a comment on that point?
Mr. DURBIN. When I finish my remarks, I will be happy to do so.
The point I am making is this: I have a friend, a woman I have known since she was a young girl. She is married. She and her husband were unable to bring a child into this world. They went to the doctor and said: Could in vitro be the answer? The doctor said: We can try.
They spent $40,000 trying unsuccessfully. Heartbroken, they went home and waited and saved up enough money and borrowed enough money to try again, and they were successful. They have a beautiful baby whom they love to pieces.
They went to those extraordinary lengths because of their love for one another and their desire to bring life into this world together. I cannot believe there is anything immoral about that motive or that effort by this couple and hundreds or thousands of other couples across America.
The Senator from Kansas knows and I know that in the course of in vitro fertilization for these good reasons, there will be stem cells that are not going to be used to impregnate the woman who is seeking to have the baby. Some of them are frozen for future use, many are currently discarded. If the argument from the Senator from Kansas is that they are life and, therefore, cannot be used for research, then I can't understand why the Senator is not calling for the criminalization of in vitro fertilization which necessarily leads to excess stem cells.
Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I will be happy to respond.
Mr. DURBIN. Without my yielding the floor.
Mr. BROWNBACK. If I could, Mr. President, and I thank my colleague from Illinois for engaging in the debate because I think that it is a debate that we have needed for a long time.
It appears we have agreement that life does begin at conception. Senator Kerry campaigned on that running for President.
I presume my colleague from Illinois agrees similarly. Others have argued, yes, an embryo is alive but it is not yet a life.
To say that a young human embryo is alive, but it's not yet a life, seems to be a bit of a legal fiction-if we are going that route. A young human embryo is biologically and genetically distinct. It is a separate entity. It is alive. It should be treated as either a person or a piece of property.
My colleague may know that in some countries in Europe on this IVF procedure, they are very careful about the number of eggs that can be harvested and fertilized before they are implanted. I think that would be a good process for us to pursue and to look at so that it is not a huge multiple set of lines but a much narrower group that are created-so that they are treated with the dignity and respect that life should merit and that life should have.
I think my colleague from Tennessee was saying this since he obviously referred to the entity in question as a nascent life. So let us look at that and let us start going at those areas. Would you try to lead to criminalization, and I recognize that may be a good point in the debate but that is not anywhere near where we are today. Let us begin with the young humans with respect and dignity that life merits.
Mr. DURBIN. If I could reclaim my time and respond, and then I would respond to a question from the Senator from North Dakota. The point I am making to the Senator from Kansas is-and I think probably Senator Frist, even as a medical doctor, would say that we struggle to figure out at what moment this is life. When we are dealing with the sperm and semen and the ovum, are they live cells? Certainly, they are live cells. There is life in those cells. If they were not, they would have no value in this process.
So to say there is life in the cells does not necessarily say we are dealing with a person. At what point does this become a person? This has been debated for as long as humans have been on Earth.
The point I am trying to make is I believe we should protect life, but we better be careful that in protecting life we are not avoiding our responsibility to protect the living. What Senator Frist is suggesting-I do not want to put words in his mouth. What I believe is that stem cell research helps us to protect the living.
I yield to the Senator from North Dakota for a question.
Mr. DORGAN. I looked forward very much to having a debate on stem cell research in the month of July. It now appears that that will not be the case. Nonetheless, I compliment the Senator from Tennessee, the majority leader, on his statement this morning.
I did want to make this point and ask a question of the Senator from Illinois. Is it not the case that those unused frozen embryos at in vitro fertilization clinics can become one of a couple of things? First and foremost, at the moment when they are unused and discarded, they become hospital waste. Second, and importantly, they can, if used in stem cell research, be used in the important medical research to preserve and to save lives.
I say to my colleague from Kansas, I have lost a daughter to heart disease-many of us have lost loved ones. I will never, ever, on the floor of this Chamber, be a part of those who wish to shut down promising medical research, especially when the ability to provide that research comes from embryos that otherwise would become hospital waste.
My colleague from Illinois asked the pertinent question, and perhaps when we have this debate some day we will have a greater description of that, but if in fact that is a human life which is now thrown in the waste basket as hospital waste, unused embryos that are discarded, if in fact that is a human life-it is not, by the way-should the destruction of that as hospital waste not be treated criminally? That would be the logical extension of some of those who are on the Senate floor wishing to shut down this promising area of research.
My hope is that we can thoughtfully, with ethical guidelines, proceed with research that is pro-life, that will save lives, that will give a lot of Americans greater hope for the future who suffer from dreaded diseases. I look forward to this debate. I wish very much it had been in the month of July, but nonetheless we will have this debate. When we do, I hope we will have a full and open discussion about it and advance the cause of saving lives in this country and around the world.
Mr. DURBIN. If I could, I will say very briefly in response, I am disappointed that we did not resolve this issue favorably in the month of July in the Senate, but I am heartened by the statement made by the majority leader today. It is my belief that we have set the stage to return in September and take up this important lifesaving issue, with a critical bipartisan debate on the Senate floor, for the good of medical research and to bring hope to a lot of people who watch every move we make on this issue.
I yield the floor.
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