mr. speaker , i thank the gentleman for yielding me this time . 
i rise in support of h.r. 2520 , which i really view as a noncontroversial , bipartisan piece of legislation that we should all be able to agree on . 
i think one speaker a moment ago talked about science and our obligation to promote science . 
i would agree with him , but with this caveat : science tells us what we can do ; science does not tell us what we should do . 
that is an ethical dimension , and we are called upon oftentimes to decide what the ethical thing to do is . 
here we have a piece of legislation dealing with an emerging area of science , but one that has already proven itself to be effective in human application and one that also shows itself to be easily obtained , that is , we either throw away umbilical cords , throw away the umbilical cord and the placenta at the time of birth , or we save the blood that can be captured at that time to make it available such that the stem cells can be taken from that and utilized in this therapeutic fashion . 
this bill would also allow us to do research with these stem cells . 
there is a tremendous frontier out there . 
there is a tremendous frontier that shows tremendous opportunity for success . 
i do not want to overhype it . 
i do not know far it will go , but certainly it has not gotten the attention that needs to be given it . 
when we talk about stem cells , we can talk about how we obtain the stem cells . 
we can do it in several ways . 
and there is an ethical dimension , an ethical dilemma that exists with respect to the second bill that will be up today . 
there is no such dilemma that exists with respect to this bill . 
we can obtain this in very easy ways , voluntarily , asking mothers at the time their children are born to donate these units such that others might be helped . 
we have been laggard in our approach to this particular area of science . 
again , i say , where we have no ethical question , where we have strong support from the scientific community , we should do no less than to support this bill strongly . 
