mr. speaker , i thank the gentleman from maryland for yielding to me . 
and i think particularly at this point i wanted to interject some thoughts . 
first of all , the gentleman from maryland ( mr. bartlett ) xz4000170 , as he pointed out just a second ago , is a ph.d . 
physiologist who taught years ago in medical school and taught physiology but , more importantly , has also taught the subject matter , which is difficult to understand . 
i know . 
i was there in medical school . 
and that is the subject of embryology . 
embryology . 
medical students get maybe in a 4-year period of time , 6 months ' worth of embryology ; and of course , to hear my colleague from maryland explaining the embryologic process , it sort of takes me back to those days . 
but i realize , of course , how difficult it is to understand for members of the body . 
there are 435 of us , of course , and just a handful have ever taken any embryology . 
there are no embryologists other than maybe the gentleman from maryland ( mr. bartlett ) xz4000170 in the body ; so it is not an easy concept to understand . 
but what i hear my colleague tell us , mr. speaker , is that it is possible to get stem cells from an embryo without destroying the embryo . 
is it being done today ? 
no , it is not being done today because , quite honestly , it is easier to scramble an egg than to do one over easy . 
it is a little more difficult . 
it will take some study . 
and we are not talking about long , many years , science fiction at all ; and the gentleman from maryland explained it very clearly . 
we are close . 
we need a little research , nonhuman primate research , but we are a lot closer to this possibility than a lot of our colleagues and the general public understand . 
mr. speaker , i want to share with my colleagues , as an ob/gyn physician , there is a procedure that probably has been done for at least 10 , 12 , maybe 14 years now . 
there is an acronym ; everything has an acronym . 
it is called icsi , intracytoplasmic sperm injection . 
what do i mean by that ? 
an infertile couple where the problem is male infertility and a low sperm count . 
a normal sperm count is 60 million . 
that is a lot . 
when we get below 1 , 000 , it is very difficult and the chances of a natural conception are markedly diminished at that point . 
but with this icsi technique , they literally can obtain sperm by a biopsy in someone who has just a few sperm , not 1 , 000 , not 60 million , but maybe just a few ; and take one sperm from that biopsy and under the proper laboratory techniques , maybe a specialized microscope , take the wife 's egg and inject that sperm with a needle , with a very fine needle , under the microscope . 
intracytoplasmic sperm injection , and all of a sudden an embryo is created . 
life is created . 
a child is created . 
and after several days in cell multiplication , as the gentleman from maryland ( mr. bartlett ) xz4000170 was explaining , then that is implanted in the mom 's uterus , and the miracle of birth can occur for that couple . 
we are not talking about a procedure , icsi , that is being done exclusively at the national institutes of health . 
this is being done right in my community of marietta , georgia , by reproductive endocrinologists , those doctors who specialize in infertility and doing those kinds of things ; and it has been going on for 10 , 12 years now . 
so this is an opportunity to come and share this time with my colleague and say that this is not star wars . 
for goodness sake , we put a man on the moon in 1969 . 
there is a way to do this . 
that is to obtain embryonic stem cells without destroying or indeed even harming the embryo , and that analogy , that explanation of twinning and how the mono-zygotic single egg identical twin that the egg divides at a certain stage ; and indeed , they are taking away 50 percent of the cells , and in most instances , if the division is complete , they have two perfectly identical , beautiful children that develop . 
i know . 
i have got two precious identical twin granddaughters now who are 7 years old , mr. speaker . 
they were born at 26 weeks , right at that point where it is perfectly legal with very little prescription in our respective states to destroy those lives . 
so this is a hugely important thing to me , and i thank my colleague for pointing out the fact that we are not that far away . 
with a little study , a little funding to be able to develop this technique of obtaining these stem cells , these totipotential cells , as he described , without scrambling the egg and doing it the easy way , the simple way , killing the embryo , which is destruction of life . 
it is not necessary . 
and we are going to be talking , mr. speaker , tomorrow in this chamber about the great successes that we are achieving today with stem cell technology , but not embryonic stem cells . 
the results there have been pretty dismal . 
we are talking about the great success , 58 different research endeavors where progress has been made in these various diseases that the gentleman from maryland ( mr. bartlett ) xz4000170 described , utilizing either stem cells obtained from umbilical cord blood or from adult stem cells , bone marrow and other tissues . 
so this is why it is so important for our colleagues to hear from the gentleman from maryland ( mr. bartlett ) xz4000170 and to think about this , to understand exactly what he is saying , because i think it is really on point and very timely . 
