mr. speaker , as most of my colleagues know , i practice general internal medicine and i still do it . 
i have treated a lot of patients with diabetes , parkinson 's ; indeed , my father died of complications of diabetes . 
my uncle , his brother , died of complications of parkinson 's disease . 
let us just talk a little bit about how we got here , okay ? 
this body voted years ago , no federal funding for research that involves the destruction of a human embryo . 
and president clinton , towards the tail end of his administration , did an end run around the congressional prohibition , and they were having outside labs destroy the embryos , get the embryonic stem cells and send them over to nih . 
and i sent the president a letter telling him , you are violating the spirit of the law , if not the letter of the law . 
when president bush became president , a lot of us alerted him to this problem , and he came out with his policy . 
and i thought it was really like a solomon-like compromise . 
he said , we will not allow any more federal funds to be used that involve the killing of human embryos , but we will allow research to proceed on the existing cell lines . 
and i sit on the committee that funds this . 
we have funded this research to the tune of $ 60 million over the last 3 years , embryonic stem cell research , what you are asking for more of . 
and the only place that i can find the research results printed is , i have to go to the rat-and-mouse journals . 
and the results are bad . 
these things tend to form tumors . 
the plasticity that some of you extol in these embryonic stem cells make them genetically unstable . 
they tend to form tumors . 
we call them teratomas in the medical profession . 
they grow hair and they grow teeth . 
they are genetically unstable . 
meanwhile , on the adult stem cell line it is breakthrough after breakthrough after breakthrough . 
indeed , the gentlewoman from colorado said in her opening statement , there is no , no scientific evidence that will show that cord blood or adult stem cells will cure alzheimer 's , parkinson 's or type 1 diabetes . 
parkinson 's disease was successfully treated 6 years ago in dennis turner using an adult stem cell . 
he had an 80 percent reduction in his symptoms . 
this was described at the american association of neurological surgeons annual meeting in april of 2002 . 
in 2003 , science-published harvard researchers announced they had achieved a permanent reversal of diabetes in mice . 
this is now under human clinical trials today , while we speak . 
by the way , they tried to repeat that study using embryonic , mouse embryonic stem cells and it failed . 
and this lady was in a wheelchair and she can now stand up with adult stem cells . 
we do not need this bill . 
it is ethically wrong . 
we should be voting `` no . '' 