mr. speaker , i thank the majority leader and my chairman for yielding me this time .  i do rise in opposition to this bill today .  the debate that we are about is expanding federal funding , not limiting research .  there are no bona fide treatments available for embryonic stem cells .  there is nothing in the laboratory , and there is certainly nothing in the clinics available to patients .  honesty is an important part of this debate , and i am concerned that more than a promise has been offered to people who are suffering and the reality is that those potential treatments are much more limited than they have been portrayed .  the president , i think , wisely put parameters , set boundaries around this type of research back in 2001 .  let us not forget that private funding for stem cell research is available today .  a couple who has an embryo developed in an ivf clinic is perfectly free to take that embryo to a lab at harvard or california and have a stem cell line developed .  the reality is in a poll of my reproductive endocrinologists back home : that never comes up as an issue .  but 22 cell lines are currently utilized .  there are an additional 31 cell lines available , per dr .  zerhouni 's testimony before our committee , that will be developed after the issue of animal growth medium becomes overcome .  and there are two papers out this past week that indicate that that date may be quickly upon us .  mr. speaker , i think it is important that we follow the money in this debate .  the reality is if there are indeed a third of the population of the united states who would benefit from this research , i believe that the big biotech money would be jumping into this .  we would not be able to keep them out .  they would be buying patents and capturing cell lines for their future use .  if there is one thing we learned in the last presidential election , it was that both major candidates asserted that life begins at conception , and we are talking about taking a life .  remember that that inner cell mass that we are talking about that is taken at about 2 weeks of development , if we put that on a timeline of a human pregnancy , about 5 days later we are going to see a heartbeat on a sonogram .  so , mr. speaker , this is what the debate is all about .  i urge us to protect life and vote against this bill .  