Where life issues are concerned, U.S. Reps. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Artur Davis (D-AL) don't always see eye-to-eye.

But they agreed that more funding was needed for the National Cord Blood Inventory program so they sat down and wrote an amendment adding millions to the national program that promotes this ethical, life-saving stem cell research and treatment.

And on July 18, their efforts resulted in success when the House of Representatives agreed to the Smith-Davis amendment to the Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations Bill.

Passage of the amendment means the federal government will allocate $15 million in fiscal 2008 to the National Cord Blood Inventory (NCBI), bringing the program's budget to the level authorized in the law Smith authored, the Stem Cell Therapeutic and Research Act of 2005.

Without the amendment, the appropriation would have been $4 million, far from enough to meet the goals and purposes of the law Smith wrote.

When they were promoting the amendment, Smith and Davis pointed out that it did not authorize over-budget spending but merely directed some discretionary funds to the cord blood program.

The National Cord Blood Inventory was established last December and created a program to collect at least 150,000 units of cord blood. Experts believe the genetic diversity of the cord blood program can meet the needs of 90 percent of patients.

The program also includes a registry to link public cord blood resources nationwide so that physicians can search the country for matching blood or bone marrow.

Unlike embryonic stem cell research, which has yet to and may never bear substantial fruit, the cord blood program is already being successfully used in research and is already saving lives.

"Approximately 8,000 patients have received cord blood treatments for over 70 diseases, including leukemia, sickle cell anemia and Hurler disease in the last two years alone," Smith said. "With a proven track record such as this, it is imperative that the federal government continue to support this innovative, live-saving program."

Without the amendment, he said, the NCBI would be shortchanged at a critical time in the program's development.

"The NCBI - created in 2005 - now gives us the opportunity to turn medical waste into medical miracles," he said. "Without passage of this amendment, the current grant recipients would need to dramatically scale back their cord blood banking initiative just as they are ramping up to treat more patients. By appropriating the full $15 million, we can triple this year's collection number."

In total, Smith's Stem Cell Therapeutic Research Act of 2005 authorized $265 million for umbilical cord blood collection and storage and for reauthorization of the National Bone Marrow Registry.

The law mandates that any units of cord blood collected and deemed unsuitable for transplantation be donated for additional cord blood stem cell research.