mr. speaker , i yield myself 2 minutes . 
mr. speaker , just speaking to the members perhaps back in the offices listening , i have 820 , 000 constituents in delaware , and probably more than a third of them have some kind of a disease that might be able to be benefited by embryonic stem cell research . 
that is true of the figures in the country . 
we have 110 million people who have illnesses out of the 290 million people who are living here . 
they have visited my office . 
they have visited your offices . 
there is not a person in this room who has not had many , many visits by people who have very , very serious needs , whose lives are going to be shortened . 
i am all for the first bill we debated today because i think it might help somewhat , but i have also looked at some statistics and i have come to realize that of the 15 leading diseases , adult stem cells can not do anything about 14 of them and can do a only little bit about heart diseases as they deal with only blood diseases in terms of what they can do . 
embryonic stem cell research has the ability , perhaps , to do much more than that . 
people are going to get up and they are going to say , well , it has n't done anything yet . 
they were only discovered about 6 1/2 years ago . 
if you read the vast body of research in the united states of america on this subject by people who are truly knowledgeable , you are going to learn there is more potential here than anything that has ever happened in medicine in the history of the united states of america . 
congress should never , ever turn its back on this opportunity . 
how are we going to get there ? 
how are we going to do embryonic stem cell research ? 
i do not have time to go through the whole in vitro fertilization process except to say that we create embryos in that particular process . 
they are then frozen . 
they are generally used and well used , the 400 , 000 embryos which are out there , to help give birth to people who might not otherwise be able to have a child . 
but at the end of the process , a decision is made by the individuals that may be involved with that . 
if the decision is they no longer want that particular embryo , they may do a variety of things with it . 
they may , as has been discussed here , give it up for adoption . 
they may decide to have it discarded as hospital waste . 
that is where the vast , almost all of them actually go as hospital waste . 
we want to give them the opportunity to say , within that embryo there are stem cells which could help other people live better lives and give them the opportunity to be able , instead of having it put in a bag for hospital waste , sitting at that table , to be put over here , and the state to be able to do the research . 
that is what we need to do . 
we need to be able to develop that as rapidly as we possibly can for the benefit of all mankind . 
mr. speaker , i rise today in support of h.r. 810 , the stem cell research enhancement act . 
i have been in public office for over 30 years and throughout my career , i -- just like all of you -- have had the opportunity to change and improve public policy so this country may continue to flourish on the principles it was founded . 
and the 820 , 000 people i represent in the state of delaware are a constant reminder to me of this responsibility . 
i am their voice in the congress of the united states . 
some of you may be wondering why i have become so interested and involved in embryonic stem cell research . 
and frankly , the answer is simple -- those 800 , 000 constituents . 
we estimated that about one-half of all visits to my office are about health care and about one-half of those visits are by delawareans who are suffering themselves or whose family members are suffering -- from juvenile diabetes , alzheimer 's , cancer , parkinson 's , hiv and hosts of other dredge diseases . 
year by year the groups would grow in number and soon we would have to get bigger rooms for our meetings . 
in the early years we would discuss the necessity of funding the national institutes of health , and i was proud to be able to support newt gingrich and the republican party 's drive to double funding for the nih . 
and that funding has gone toward the basic science needed to find cures and treatments to our most debilitating diseases . 
but in the past few years , the number one topic on these groups ' minds was embryonic stem cell research . 
one little girl stands out in mind . 
i met her a few months ago at an event back in delaware . 
olivia was two months old when she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes . 
her parents were first time parents so it is no wonder that the practice of testing her blood sugar and giving her insulin shots was extremely heartbreaking . 
olivia is now 6 and has never known life without diabetes . 
she is the person we are fighting for on the floor today . 
she is one of 110 million people who are suffering that may be helped by stem cell research . 
i remember very clearly the difficult decision president bush made on august 9 , 2001 and i know how careful he was to balance the needs of science with his own moral concerns . 
at the time , the compromise -- to allow federal funding for research on embryonic stem cells lines that had already been derived -- seemed quite reasonable . 
but as we know , unfortunately , the number of lines eligible for research -- once as high as 78 -- is now only at 22 , with the nih saying the number of lines will never get above 23 . 
so when diana degette and i began discussing how to expand the president 's policy in an ethical manner , i went right back to the speech he gave to the nation in 2001 . 
we wanted to be as consistent as possible with the ethics he laid out in his speech as we worked to update the policy . 
the legislation we are going to vote on today , h.r. 810 , the stem cell research enhancement act , which has the backing of the medical groups , the scientists , the research universities and the patient advocacy groups , mirrors the president 's ethical requirements . 
i will read them to you and ask that you think about them very closely : ( 1 ) embryos used to derive stem cells were originally created for fertility treatment purposes and are in excess of clinical need ; ( 2 ) the individuals seeking fertility treatments for whom the embryos were created have determined that the embryos will not be implanted in a woman and will otherwise be discarded ; and , ( 3 ) the individuals for whom the embryos were created have provided written consent for embryo donation and without receiving financial inducement . 
you may ask what is different -- we simply lift the arbitrary august 9 , 2001 date . 
it is also critical that we are clear about what this legislation does not do : ( 1 ) no federal funding for the destruction of embryos or human life . 
this is prohibited by law . 
( 2 ) no federal funding for the creation of embryos for research . 
under our legislation it is up to the couple to decide what should happen to their embryos . 
embryos can be adopted or donated ; embryos can be frozen for future family building ; embryos can be discarded . 
after that initial decision is made , and if a couple decides to discard the embryos , our legislation would allow those couples to make a second choice -- do they want to donate them to research ? 
an embryo or blastocyst is about 250 cells and the inner cell mass is about 100 cells and that is where the stem cells come from . 
they are created in a petri dish , are about 5 days old and are the size of a pine head . 
of the 400 , 000 frozen embryos in in vitro fertilization clinics throughout the u.s. , about 2 percent are discarded annually -- that is about 8 , 000 -- 11 , 000 embryos that could be slated for research . 
allowing the option of donating these excess embryos to research is similar to donating organs for organ transplantation in order to save or improve the quality of another person 's life . 
the bottom line is when a couple has decided to discard their excess embryos they are either going to be discarded as medical waste or they can be donated for research . 
throughout this debate you will hear about adult stem cells and more about umbilical cord cells and how these types of cells are sufficient for scientists . 
this is simply not true . 
umbilical cord cells are adult stem cells and they are limited . 
adult and umbilical cord cells are already differentiated into the types of cells they are , they are difficult to harvest and grow and they do not exist for every tissue type . 
on the other hand , embryonic stem cells are `` master cells '' -- they have the potential to grow into any type of cell in the body , they are easier to identify , isolate , purify and grow and they are capable of continual reproduction . 
listen to what the nih has to say on this topic : human embryonic stem cells are thought to have much greater developmental potential than adult stem cells . 
this means that embryonic stem cells may be pluripotent -- that is , able to give rise to cells found in all tissues of the embryo except for germ cells rather than being merely multipotent -- restricted to specific subpopulations of cell types , as adult stem cells are thought to be . 
in 2003 , 1.6 million people died of heart disease , cancer , diabetes , alzheimer 's , kidney disease , liver disease and parkinson 's . 
of the 15 leading causes of death , adult stem cell research only addresses one . 
adult stem cells have been around since the 1960s . 
embryonic stem cells were only isolated in 1998 . 
we must explore research on all types of stem cells , but the reality is the only policy that is restricted is the federal embryonic stem cell policy . 
the nih is the right place to oversee this research because it can regulate the ethics , it provides for scientific collaboration and peer review and promotes publication so all breakthroughs are reported and all scientists have access to the latest research discoveries . 
without nih oversight there are no guidelines as to how this research should be conducted . 
the united states has always been the premier leader in biomedical research in our country and around the world . 
as science continues to move rapidly forward , we need to continue to lead the way but we are not . 
why should we waste one more year , one more day , forcing millions to suffer because of a policy that is outdated and unworkable . 
does this congress really want to look back 10 years from now and say that we were the ones holding the treatments up ? 
or do we want to be the congress that says , we back science , we want research to flourish and we played a small role in making that happen . 
support h.r. 810 , the stem cell research enhancement act and accelerate hope . 
