mr. speaker , i thank the gentleman for yielding , and i thank my friend , the gentleman from nebraska ( mr. osborne )  , for being here with us tonight and for his very , very pertinent remarks in regard to where do you draw the line as far as life .  i have heard people on the other side of this argument say , well , we are talking about getting these stem cells , and they are not really embryos , they are pre-embryos .  maybe our ph.d .  physiologist knows about the definition of pre-embryo , but i never learned that in embryology or any medical school course i took or in my obstetric and gynecology training and my 30 years of experience in the field .  an embryo is an embryo .  an embryo begins at the moment of conception when that sperm and egg come together .  that is the embryonic stage .  really , an embryo , that stage lasts until the birth of the child .  now , you can differentiate and say at 8 weeks or 10 weeks we start calling it a fetus , but there is no , to my knowledge , definition of a pre-embryo .  i wanted to just kind of follow on the gentleman from nebraska 's remarks .  we are hearing a lot now about we have to catch up , mr. speaker , that we are behind .  the south koreans have come up with therapeutic cloning and they have cloned an embryo and they are going to get embryonic stem cells from a cloned embryo , and we are getting further and further behind .  the thing that the american public maybe does not understand is that when they are asked the question , are you for embryonic stem cell research that can cure some of these dreaded diseases , my colleagues have talked about , naturally the response is going to be , oh , yes .  and use federal funding for that ?  sure .  we are going to cure juvenile type i diabetes , and christopher reeves , god rest his soul , we are going to restore the function of his limbs , and we are going to cure alzheimer 's .  but i think so many people , mr. speaker , and even some of our colleagues , need to understand that in getting those embryonic stem cells , the life is destroyed .  and when you ask that question , well , wait a minute now , if you are talking about sacrificing one life to get these cells in hopes that they might lead to at some point in the future a cure , no , i am not for that .  so i think we need to be very clear by it , mr. speaker .  we need to make sure that people understand that the harvesting today and the way it is done and the way it is proposed and the way we are hearing from the castle-degette bill we are going to discuss tomorrow is using federal dollars , taxpayer dollars , where people had no choice , they had to pay their taxes , we are going to use those dollars to fund research that involves the destruction of human life , a little , tiny infant , who with a little bit of luck and ingenuity could grow up and be a member of this body some day .  we were all , were we not , embryos at one time .  of course we were .  and when you get this and you start down this slippery slope in regard to what the south koreans are doing , suppose , mr. speaker , that the harvesting of these stem cells from these cloned embryos that the results are not very good , as they have not really been very good in the embryonic stem cells we have retained from these so-called throw-away babies , these 400 , 000 in these fertility clinics .  the results have not been that good .  that is why the gentleman from nebraska said that most of the private funding is going toward adult stem cells .  but what i am saying , and i will wrap this up pretty quickly because i know the gentleman 's time is running short , in these cloned embryos , if it is not working too well with the fetal cells , the embryonic cells , why not let these babies develop , maybe to the point 26 weeks , the stage at which my precious twin granddaughters were born , and then you have got an organ that you can transplant , a liver , a pancreas , and you can then just simply destroy the child at that point and take their organs ?  this is a slippery slope upon which we are about to start if we do not defeat this bill tomorrow , and the gentleman from maryland ( mr. bartlett )  has an alternative to this , and it is something that i think is timely and it is good and i commend him for his efforts .  