mr. speaker , i thank the gentleman very much and applaud him for his effort .  i have been able to listen to most of what was said tonight .  obviously , the gentleman has a tremendous depth of scientific understanding .  i do not have that depth , but i would just like to reflect on the dilemma that many members will be placed in tomorrow as we decide on this particular vote .  as the gentleman has mentioned , those who are in favor of embryonic stem cell research , many of them are people who have children who have juvenile diabetes .  there are many who have parents or others with parkinson 's or alzheimer 's and lou gehrig 's disease and so on .  we have heard from these people personally , and our hearts go out to them .  we have heard that 400 , 000 embryos are going to be discarded anyway , and on and on and on .  yet , on the other side of the argument , as the gentleman has amplified so well , there are some other dilemmas .  one thing that is of concern to me is when is a life a life ?  obviously , we would not take a 2-year-old and do any harm to that child ; we would not experiment on that child .  we would not do it to a 1-year-old .  probably , in many cases , most of us would say an 8-month-old fetus would not be appropriate to do some harm to .  but where is it that you draw the line ?  is it at 6 months ?  is it at 4 months ?  is it at 1 month ?  is it at 1 week ?  so therein lies the horns of the dilemma .  so many of us are of the persuasion that you really can not draw that line .  when a life is a life is at conception , and therefore you have to respect life .  there is a certain sanctity of life .  so , again , the arguments will range wide and far tomorrow .  some will say that embryos can be adopted , and they can .  so whether we have 400 , 000 or 20 , 000 , maybe 1 , 000 , maybe 10 , 000 , maybe 15 , 000 , maybe more than that will be adopted out .  many will argue that adult stem cells are more productive in research .  as the gentleman has pointed out so effectively here , some of that has to do with the length of time of research .  there is no question .  but there is no question that adequate resources and adult stem cell research will produce results .  there is also the question about private funding .  there is no restriction on private funding on embryonic stem cell research .  if it is so promising , then why has the private sector not stepped up , because obviously there are huge profits to be made if you have some type of a cure for juvenile diabetes or alzheimer 's or whatever ; and yet we do not seem to see that afoot .  then i guess the last thing that i would mention is that there is the ethical question , should we use public funds in doing research that is so divisive , that has so many people on both sides of the fence ?  it seems we should have more unanimity in using public funds to do this type of research .  so i applaud the gentleman for the proposed legislation that he has before us , because in this legislation is the prospect of using embryonic stem cells without destroying the embryo .  of course , that removes the dilemma on both sides .  so we think that the legislation , even though it is in its early stages , certainly has great promise and is one that we ought to pay very close heed to and one that would certainly be much more appealing to me than the other alternatives at the present time .  mr. speaker , i just wanted to come down briefly and let the gentleman from maryland ( mr. bartlett )  know i appreciate his efforts .  i have read the white house white paper .  i understand most of what is in there .  one other thing that is also mentioned is the fact that when these frozen embryos are thawed out , many of them die , as the gentleman mentioned ; and some of those apparently will yield stem cells in the early stages .  anyway , mr. speaker , i thank the gentleman again for this legislation .  