mr. speaker , i am one of seven children . 
i am the second oldest . 
my older brother john is 2 years and 2 days older than i. we grew up together closer than any other members of the family . 
after i left this house on the first occasion , within 2 years , my brother developed parkinson 's . 
he has now suffered with it for 15 years . 
i have learned a lot of things from my brother , but one of the things i learned most of all was there is a difference between right and wrong . 
there is a moral dimension in most of the serious issues that we must face . 
would i like to support embryonic stem cell research without a question of ethics because it might assist my brother ? 
sure . 
would i like to see embryonic stem cell research in the area of cancer where it might have helped one of my sisters who has had cancer ? 
yes . 
would i like to see it in terms of research of cancer that plagues 4-year-old children like my nephew ? 
of course . 
but can we divorce all of that from the ethical norm that we must present here ? 
we look back in history and , yes , america has oftentimes promoted science . 
but america has made mistakes in the past . 
the worst mistakes we have ever made in the history of this nation have been when we have defined a part of the human family as less than fully human and then done things to them that we would not allow done to ourselves . 
we have done it with slavery . 
we have done it with the tuskegee medical experiments . 
other countries have done it as well . 
the commonality among all of those mistakes , the greatest mistakes in our nation 's history , has been the ease with which we defined members of the human family as less than fully human . 
we are talking about embryonic stem cell research that requires the destruction of the embryo , the destruction of part of the human family . 
we should remember that as we talk here today . 
we should resolve doubt in favor of life as we do in our criminal justice system , as we do in our civil law system . 
