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 )  , 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 )  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 )  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 )  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 )  and to think about this , to understand exactly what he is saying , because i think it is really on point and very timely .  