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• Rep. DeGette's official site
• "Rep. DeGette on 'Sex, Science and Stemcells' and Obama"
• About Sex, Science and Stemcells

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House Majority Whip discusses the controversy surrounding stem cell research. (2:05)
 

Full Interview. (11:48)
 

Tavis: Congresswoman Diana DeGette is serving her sixth germ in the House in Colorado and is a member of the House leadership as chief deputy whip for House Democrats. She's also vice chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and she is the author of the new book "Sex, Science, and Stem Cells: Inside the Right-Wing Assault on Reason." Congresswoman, nice to have you on the program.

Congresswoman Diana DeGette: So good to be with you, Tavis.

Tavis: Glad to have you here. So you're here to see me now, and I'm headed your way in a few days -

DeGette: That's right, that's right.

Tavis: - for the Democratic convention.

DeGette: Yeah.

Tavis: So your district encompasses the whole convention.

DeGette: Right, this is the first time I can remember in many years of politics where the whole convention's been in one congressional district, Denver. So I'm excited, I feel like the hostess to the world. I think we're going to have a good message to tell them, and I think we're going to nominate the next president.

Tavis: We just talked to your governor on this program days ago, the governor of Colorado, and I asked him the same question I now ask you, since we're getting days closer, are you all ready? Because I keep reading these stories that some things are ready and some things are still on -

DeGette: Oh, I think we'll be ready. A lot of this always happens at the last minute, and it was really exacerbated this year by the late nominee. So once Senator Obama came in, his people came on the ground, we've met our fundraising goals, everything else is coming into play.

Tavis: I sometimes take for granted that the stuff that we know everybody else knows, and I don't know everything but I moved past this terminology so fast I want to catch myself and back up sometimes. So for those who don't know what it means to be a whip in the House, you should explain that.

DeGette: Well, what the whips do is they count the votes for their parties, and both parties have them. And it's particularly important, as I've learned, when you're in the majority and you're trying to pass legislation. But what I do, and the reason I love being a whip is because it really makes you talk to a variety of members, people you might not naturally spend time with.

I tend to whip Democrats and Republicans, because I don't think we should have this false partisanship. And on the issues I work on, like stem cell research, I have a good amount of support from Republicans as well as Democrats.

Tavis: So you're whipping them into line.

DeGette: I'm whipping them into line. But mainly what it is with me is I'm convincing them of my point of view, and by the time I'm done they don't know what happened to them. (Laughter)

Tavis: That's a beautiful way to put it. I'm always fascinated - I'll get to the book here in just a second, but on the way to the text, I'm always fascinated by how and why certain members of Congress have certain fields and areas of expertise. So you are regarded on both sides of the aisle in Congress, Democrat and Republican, as an expert on stem cell. How did, for you, this become your area of expertise?

DeGette: Well, Tavis, I have no background in science. The biggest claim to fame I have is I took high school biology. But what happened is I'm a trained lawyer, so I'm trained to investigate things. In the late 1990s, my daughter, who was four years old then, was diagnosed with type I diabetes, a terrible diagnosis for a family, and I talk about that in the book, what it did to our family.

But around that same time, embryonic stem cells were discovered, and type I diabetes was one of the diseases for which that research showed huge promise. So that's how I got into it, and with my lawyer's mind I just learned all about it and became its strongest advocate.

Tavis: So let me ask you to take your advocate's hat off for just a second, then I'll let you put it back on. For those who don't know this issue as well as you do, we at least know that stem cell research, whatever this thing called stem cell is - this area of science - is very controversial. So before I talk about your point of view on it, which you raise in the book, tell me why stem cell research is so controversial.

DeGette: Well, embryonic stem cell research in particular. The way they do it is they take embryos which are created for in-vitro fertilization procedures, which are left over from those procedures, and then they're going to be thrown away as medical waste. And so what I say is let's let people donate those embryos for the important research.

The reason it's controversial is because some people on the far right and the National Right to Life Committee think that those embryos are people. It's the same reason why they oppose abortion or birth control or many, many other issues. What's interesting, though, is embryonic stem cell research really isn't so controversial anymore. It enjoys a broad swath of support among the American population.

Tavis: How is this issue being treated now in Congress and inside this particular White House?

DeGette: Well, of course I've introduced legislation twice with my Republican co-sponsor, Mike Castle from Delaware. The president has vetoed the bill twice, and I've now finally come to the decision he's not going to sign it. So Mike and I are now developing legislation that's a broader bill. It both reverses President Bush's restrictions on stem cell research, but it also creates almost a Manhattan Project at the National Institutes of Health for all ethical cell-based research, and it sets up ethical oversight.

Because many people don't know this, but we don't have ethical oversight over a lot of the research that's going on in this country right now, in private hands and by states. We have no federal oversight.

Tavis: How does the issue of cloning connect to this issue of stem cell research?

DeGette: Well, of course we have two types of cloning, and this has been controversial, too. There's human reproductive cloning, which virtually every scientists and every elected official opposes. I frankly think reproductive cloning should be banned. But then there's somatic cell nuclear transfer, and that's - I always say formerly known as therapeutic cloning.

What that is, it's a similar technique but it's designed for research purposes, not for implantation in a uterus or for birth. And this research process is really important, because it could be the clinical extension of stem cell research because it uses people's own cells and so they wouldn't have the rejection problems like with organ donation or with even embryonic stem cell research.

Tavis: I'm not an expert in this field, obviously, but if you allow the therapeutic, how do you stop them from going further and how do you police it? How do we get to the point where you and I agree, where we can say - not just say we ban human cloning, but in fact police that.

DeGette: You make it - it's actually simpler than you think. You make it a federal criminal offense with severe penalties to implant one of these cloned cells into a uterus or to try to find some way -

Tavis: But there are all kinds of federal laws on the book that people break every day.

DeGette: Well, the other thing you do, once we set up this ethical review board, which we don't have right now, is you make everybody who's going to do this type of research go for approval to that board. And the way it would stop it is there would be no way people could get any kind of economic benefit. So it's a one-two punch - no economic benefit and it's a federal crime.

Tavis: Aside from the wonderful alliteration of "Sex, Science, and Stem Cells," the sex and science in the title of the book suggest what?

DeGette: Well, what that shows to me - the reason I wrote the book is because the right wing and the Christian Coalition are completely incapable of talking about rational science when it comes to sex and reproduction, and it's not just stem cell research, it's not even just abortion. It's international HIV/AIDS policy, it's abstinence-only sex education, federal employees' healthcare plans covering birth control, even though they cover Viagra - all kinds of issues like this.

And I think Americans realize that there are some of these bigger arguments around abortion or stem cell research, but they don't realize some of the absurd policies that Congress comes out with simply because it cannot deal in a rational way with science. And that's what I talk about in the book.

Tavis: Since you are given great credit for being able to reach not just inside of your party but across the aisle - Mr. Castle one example - but since you're good at reaching across the aisle to have these conversations, clearly you know the trouble areas when it comes to getting legislation passed.

You talk about it in the book, how wrong the right is on many of these issues. But are there areas of common ground? Are there areas where you see progress being made, politically?

DeGette: Well, you're right, it's not just Republican versus Democrat. I tell people some of the great heroes of my book are moderate Republicans. It is very difficult to make progress, but I think we've made progress with stem cell research. We now have a solid majority of the House and the Senate and members on both sides of the aisle who support stem cell research.

And I work tirelessly to get them to support birth control and other issues. One hopeful sign this year is in the international AIDS budget for this year, we were able to remove some of the restrictions on condom usage in foreign countries. The AIDS money, $15 billion, for many years went almost exclusively to agencies that are religious-based that won't give condoms to prevent HIV/AIDS, which is insane.

Tavis: So we know, to your point - before I let you go, we know that, to your point, the House and the Senate have passed stem cell research legislation twice.

DeGette: Right.

Tavis: As you told us earlier, President Bush has vetoed it twice.

DeGette: Right.

Tavis: We're in the midst of a political campaign; we're coming to your hometown in just a few days for the convention, and then the Republicans in Minnesota. What do Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain have to say or not say around the issue of stem cell research?

DeGette: Well, the good news is both of them voted for my bill. But the bad news is now Senator McCain is kind of backing away from this issue because he has to walk a very fine line between the religious right and the moderates. So I'm worried he won't do what we need to expand the research, but in addition, on the other issues that I talk about in this book, I always say to people, "Maverick does not mean moderate."

He voted against condoms as part of international HIV money, he voted for abstinence-only sex education. He voted not to allow federal employees' health insurance pay for birth control - on and on and on. Some of the groups have given him a zero percent rating on some of these issues, and I think voters, coming towards the fall, need to look at candidates on both sides of the aisle and they need to say, "Is this a candidate that cares about science in making reproductive policy?"

Otherwise we're wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and we're having a bad effect on public health. So that's what's going on.

Tavis: I thank her for coming our way tonight, and we're headed her way in just a few days. This program will emanate live every night from the Democratic convention in Denver, followed, of course, the next week by the Republicans in Minnesota. So we'll be in her district. Her name is Congresswoman Diana DeGette, her new book is called "Sex, Science, and Stem Cells: Inside the Right-Wing Assault on Reason." Congresswoman, nice to see you tonight, and I'll see you in a few days.

DeGette: Great. Good to be with you.

Tavis: Thanks for coming on.

DeGette: Thanks.