Welcomes Senate debate and vote on three bioethics bills in July
Contact Brian Hart/John Rankin, Press Office for Sam Brownback, United States Senator – Kansas, 202-224-6521
WASHINGTON, June 30 /Christian Newswire/ -- U.S. Senator Sam Brownback today welcomed a bipartisan Senate agreement that paves the way for up-or-down votes in July on three stem cell and bioethics bills.
“I welcome this debate on bioethics and stem cells and I look forward to making the case for successful, ethical, and non-controversial adult stem cell research,” said Brownback. “Today we have derived over 70 peer-reviewed and published medical treatments from adult stem cell research, while the outlook of embryonic stem cell research is speculative. The federal government should not commit taxpayer dollars to morally wrong embryonic stem cell research when ethical adult stem cell research is delivering real medical treatments. Some of the very treatments promised by proponents of stem cell research are actually being delivered by adult stem cells.”
After a specified period of debate the Senate will hold consecutive votes on three bills: S.3504, the Santorum-Brownback Fetus Farming Prohibition Act, S.2754, the Santorum-Specter Alternative Pluripotent Stem Cell Therapies Enhancement Act, and H.R.810, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, sponsored by Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE).
Brownback continued, “I am opposed to H.R.810 because it would require taxpayers to fund the destruction of young human lives. It has never been acceptable to use human beings as means to an end, even if that end is scientific research. I hope to see passage of the Fetus Farming Prohibition Act, which would stop the gruesome practice of initiating human pregnancies in either women or animal uteruses for the purpose of obtaining human tissues for research.”
Embryonic stem cell research requires the destruction of human embryos and is moving in the direction of human cloning, while adult stem cell research involves the uncontroversial practice of taking stem cells from one’s own body or from a newborn’s umbilical cord blood.
Senator Brownback is a member of the Judiciary Committee and Appropriations Committee.
