Texans for Advancement of Medical Research

“the promise of regenerative medicine cuts across all fields of medicine and touches everyone who either has a chronic disease or who may develop one or who suffers a traumatic injury. If its complete potential is realized, treatments could be developed to address not only fatal and life-altering diseases but also injuries and degeneration including stroke, burns and arthritis.”

“State leaders should work with Gov. Rick Perry and the Legislature to develop a stem-cell research policy that keeps Texas from being ‘left in the dust’ by California. I think that Texas needs to have a responsible, ethical policy regarding stem-cell research. I think if we are going to stay in the forefront of scientific discoveries, we are going to have to find an ethical way to keep the state-of-the-art experiments on stem cells and how they can displace unhealthy cells in people’s bodies.”

“In my state, Missouri, Republicans in the General Assembly have advanced legislation to criminalize even stem cell research in which the cells are artificially produced in petri dishes and will never be transplanted into the human uterus. It is not evident to many of us that cells in a petri dish are equivalent to identifiable people suffering from terrible diseases. I am and always have been pro-life. But the only explanation for legislators comparing cells in a petri dish to babies in the womb is the extension of religious doctrine into statutory law…. Criminalizing the work of scientists doing such research would give strong support to one religious doctrine, and it would punish people who believe it is their religious duty to use science to heal the sick.” John C. Danforth, a former United States Senator from Missouri, resigned in January 2005 as Ambassador to the United Nations. He is an Episcopal minister. New York Times, March 30, 2005 OP-ED

Former Secretary of State in the Reagan Whitehouse, Shultz is a Supporter of California’s Proposition 71.

“I’m writing, therefore, to offer my support for stem cell research and to tell you I’m in favor of new legislation to allow the ethical use of therapeutic cloning.”

“Therapeutic cloning, or nuclear transplantation, may have enormous potential for the treatment of heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s, spinal cord injury and a vast array of other diseases and injuries. Unlike reproductive cloning, this approach will never produce a cloned human being. But it should result in the development of life-saving therapies that could improve the well-being of all Americans.”

“Though I fully support banning reproductive cloning, I strongly oppose any restrictions on therapeutic cloning.”

“It’s wrong to prevent science from helping people. It’s plain dumb to impede the growth of biotechnology and other life sciences in a state that desperately needs this economic development.”

“The potential benefits of regenerative medicine are profound.”