Congressman Harry Mitchell - "Advancing Research"

I know that in the last post, I mentioned that I don't normally post press releases verbatim, before doing so.  I'm doing it again, but letters from Congressman Harry Mitchell are something that I've always made an exception for.

From an email -

Degenerative diseases are devastating. We all have someone in our lives who suffers from a chronic and potentially life-threatening disease like Alzheimer’s, Lou Gehrig’s, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s, cancer or even diabetes. These relationships in my own life have pushed me to strongly support cutting-edge medical research so that we can discover treatments for the millions of Americans who suffer from a wide array of diseases and conditions.


One of the first things I did after taking office in 2007 was take to the floor of the House and urge my colleagues to overturn the stem cell research ban. Congress rarely gets an opportunity to offer hope to the millions of Americans who suffer from these diseases; however, last year we were given the opportunity to invest in science and ethical research. On March 9, 2009, President Obama issued an Executive Order to allow federal funding of human stem cell research, including human embryonic stem cell research. I thought this was a great step in the right direction because many scientists believe embryonic stem cells hold greater promise than adult stem cells for further scientific breakthroughs which will advance research on many devastating diseases.

Recently, the issue of stem cell research has been reintroduced to the national discussion as a result of a temporary injunction that was placed on federal stem cell research by a federal court in August.

Although the injunction has since been lifted by a higher federal court, I have joined on as a cosponsor to the Stem Cell Research Advancement Act of 2009, H.R. 4808. This bill would expand the lot of available stem cells for research by codifying that federal research projects may use stem cells regardless of the date on which the stem cells were derived. I am proud to be a supporter of this bill, and will continue to strongly support stem cell research to help discover treatments for a wide array of diseases and conditions.

As always, I look forward to being able to provide you with regular updates and continue our dialogue in support of advancing important medical research.

Sincerely,

Harry

Later...