Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Bill 2006 and I rise to speak against it, which probably would not surprise Senator Patterson. I spoke against it in 2002 and nothing that has been presented from that period until now leads me to change my mind in relation to the decision that I will be called upon to make later this week.

Like Senator Barnett, I have had my own journey through a difficult period of health. I am a cancer survivor and I have seen the fragilities of life. I have spent time in palliative care wards and I have seen people who have come to the realisation that they are no longer going to live—that they are going to succumb. So I am aware of the difficulties confronting many senators with this legislation. Even though I was unable to attend the inquiry because I had made previous commitments, I did attempt to read as many of the submissions and as much of the literature as I could, and indeed I did read all of the Hansard of the three days of the inquiry.

One of the things that immediately struck me from the inquiry was a quote from Senator Moore. Early on in the inquiry she said:

The degree of strongly held views about scientific evidence is a surprise to us who are not scientists.

During the conduct of the inquiry that view was expressed on a number of occasions. Like Senator Moore, I am not a scientist and, as I went through and read as much as I could in the time I had, a few things struck me. The first was that there were a significant number of scientists, biologists, biotechnicians and engineers who were unaware of each other’s work. The second thing was that they were not prepared to acknowledge each other’s work—and Senator Patterson is looking quizzical there—and that goes for people who were involved in adult as well as embryonic stem cell research. The third thing that struck me was that, if there were scientists who held moral or ethical objections to what was being proposed in addition to their own scientific views, they were somehow to be ridiculed.

Also, during the conduct of the inquiry there was significant debate about the membership and recommendations of the Lockhart inquiry. Many scientists challenged the membership and the qualifications of those reviewers. They challenged the evidence on which Lockhart made its recommendations. A number of eminent scientists claimed time and again that the committee was not qualified to draw the conclusions that it did; that it chose evidence that was subsequently discredited, such as that in South Korea that has been mentioned on a few occasions today; that it relied on an inquiry that was conducted in India; and that it did not, indeed, refer to—and I think I am right in this—the US presidential commissions into bioethics in 2002, 2004 and 2005. It could be argued that, as a result of the membership and the evidence, the Lockhart inquiry would come up with the recommendations that are the basis of the legislation we are dealing with today.

Of course that has been debated somewhat and I am sure that Senator Patterson and others who are proponents of this bill will have the opportunity to get up and refute what has been put forward. But in my reading I did not see any substantial refutation of the points that I have made. They did rely on some inquiries—one discredited, and one in India—and disregard the ones that were in fact not supportive of the position that they would put forward. So of course they would come up with the answer that they came up with.

I also tried to look through the literature, the submissions and the Hansard for what might come out of this. The first point I make—and it has been made today already—is that adult stem cell research has had breakthroughs. Embryonic stem cell research—and it has been questioned—has not been sufficiently tested on animals yet, let alone transferred to humans. In fact, embryonic stem cell therapy produces what are called teratomas—tumours—and is likely to be rejected. In the US Senate, when it was debating a bill similar to this only a few months ago, a proponent of embryonic stem cell research said:

Lord Winston, the most prominent foetal embryonic stem cell researcher in England, said ‘I view the current wave of optimism about embryonic stem cell research with growing suspicion.’

A lot of false hope, pending cures and breakthroughs have been peddled in this debate. Professor Skene admitted in the inquiry that the benefits of this type of research will not be available in her children’s lifetime but might be available in her grandchildren’s lifetime. The proponents of adult stem cell research argued that it presented the best hope for cures. This was presented to the inquiry and it has not been refuted.

During the inquiry, I read Senator Nettle’s concerns. The first of her concerns was whether any breakthrough as a result of this legislation coming into law would be publicly available. The second was whether there would be exploitation of vulnerable women. One of the submitters to the inquiry, Professor Khachigian, under questioning as to what might occur as a result of the bill going through, admitted that it would lead to health and wealth creation in Australia. Mr Acting Deputy President, do you for one minute believe that any breakthroughs that come as a result of this will be widely available? I do not believe it at all; I believe we will see them become the province of the rich and powerful. I believe this legislation will inevitably lead to the opportunity in a few years time for proponents of this research to come in here and say that the only way we can really do this properly is to clone ourselves—to clone humans. They will say, ‘I need that kidney,’ or ‘I need that liver,’ or ‘I need that heart,’ or ‘I need that pancreas.’ It will eventually happen if we pass this legislation. It may take more than four years, Senator Patterson, but it will be here.

Senator Nettle’s second concern was the exploitation of vulnerable women. Evidence was given and not refuted that to successfully conduct the experiments that are required thousands of fresh eggs will be needed. In fact the discredited South Korean scientist, Dr Hwang, used 2,061 eggs from 129 women. Dr Renate Klein, the Australian coordinator of a group called FINRRAGE, which stands for the Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering, gave evidence that frozen material—that is, embryonic material—is always second-rate, that women on IVF programs are usually older and they or their partners have chromosomal abnormalities. She said:

This is not good starting material for your foray into the unknown land of embryonic stem cell research.

She went on to say that the embryonic stem cell researcher needs:

... Petri dishes full of young, freshly harvested eggs from teenage women who have had very few divisions of their egg cells.

In the UK, as has been put forward in today’s debate, women are already selling their eggs at a discount to get access to IVF programs. At the hearing on 24 October, Katrina George, the director of Women’s Forum Australia, said:

... the Daily Mail recently exposed a situation where east European women were actually selling their ova to fertility clinics and some of them had been rendered infertile as a result. So it would not just be the disadvantaged women within our own country but very likely women from developing nations or poorer nations who would be the ones to take up the offer ...

Dr Klein on the same day said:

We know from America, where women can get paid for egg cell donation for IVF, that there are whole websites where eggs from beautiful women fetch thousands of dollars.

These statements were not refuted. As I said earlier, I believe that at the end of the day only the rich and powerful will have access to what may come as a result of the research outlined in this legislation. I am not sure that we are ready to make this momentous decision to leap into the future. I am very concerned about the moral and ethical lines that we will cross as a result of passing this legislation. I am not sure that science and technology should be trusted to allow this to occur.

We are already starting to see the results of putting our trust in science and technology, whether it is global warming or the inquiry that I have just come from, which was into the issue of the men and women who were exposed to British nuclear tests in Australia. We did not know what was going to happen to those men and women, their families or their descendants. It seemed like a good thing at the time, but we did not give it enough consideration.

People may say that this is some sort of contest, as has already been hinted at, between the Dark Ages and the Age of Enlightenment. We do not know what the future holds. We do not know what door we are opening if we pass this legislation. I am very concerned—and Senator Patterson will have the opportunity to refute this—that we will be presented with the ability to clone ourselves in the future, because that is inevitably where this is leading us. I am very concerned that nowhere is it advised that some of the things available under the legislation are in the legislation. I have asked many people if they are aware that, under this legislation, hybridisation—the cross-fertilisation of humans and animals—is being proposed as well as access to human cadavers and, ultimately, the ability to create embryos for research. Many Australians are not aware of what is being proposed here, and no amount of public opinion polling or indeed lobbying of officers would make that available to them.

I feel that old faiths may no longer suffice, but I think we should have new fears about where we are going with this. I have said that, if we pass this bill, in a few years we will be asked to approve reproductive cloning on the same grounds as we are being asked to approve this bill now. I believe our humanity, how we view ourselves, what is important to our being and this dismissal of values as mere products of emotion will return in a terrible, psychological way to haunt us if this legislation is carried.