Grant Chapman (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The debate we are engaged in today on the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Bill 2006, in essence, is to decide whether any legislative changes are required, in response to the legislative review committee, also known as the Lockhart committee review, to the 2002 laws prohibiting human cloning and regulating research on human embryos. The Australian parliament first considered legislation on cloning and embryo experimentation in 2002 on a conscience vote. The Prohibition of Human Cloning Act 2002 and the Research Involving Human Embryos Act 2002 were the result of many hours of parliamentary debate in this place.

When those bills came before us no parliamentarian spoke in favour of creating embryos for the purpose of research and experimentation. The point of division between parliamentarians at that time was whether experimentation on excess embryos produced during in-vitro fertilisation and other procedures for artificial reproductive technology should be permitted with the consent of the donors. The laws were reviewed three years later by the Lockhart committee. This review made a number of recommendations, including continuing the ban on reproductive cloning and the creation of hybrid embryos. The Lockhart committee has recommended lifting the ban on human embryonic cloning for research, clinical and training purposes, including deriving stem cell lines for possible therapeutic purposes, providing such embryos are not implanted into the womb and are not allowed to develop for more than 14 days. The bill we are debating today gives effect to these recommendations.

It is at this point I have to take issue with arguments I have heard by supporters of the legislation during my intermittent monitoring of the debate during the day. Senator Webber, for example, asserted that opposition to this bill was based on the slippery slope argument that this legislation would pave the way for further changes later, reducing embryonic protection. Let me say that this is not a point I had considered in reaching my position on the bill, and therefore I had not planned to include it in my remarks. However, given that Senator Webber and subsequently Senator Stott Despoja have raised it, let me say that the very fact that we are debating this bill proves the veracity of the slippery slope argument. As I said, four years ago we debated and the parliament passed the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act 2002 and the Research Involving Human Embryos Act 2002, which at the time, it was claimed, went as far as we should go and needed to go on this issue. Yet here we are barely four years later debating another bill to remove restrictions contained in that earlier legislation. I say the slippery slope case is proved. How long before we will be back here again in the name of science removing the very limited protections claimed to exist in this bill?

Senator Stott Despoja also claimed that there would be a lot of misleading arguments put by opponents of the bill in this debate. However, in her remarks she failed completely to detail the misleading nature of those arguments that she mentioned. Senator Adams justified support for the bill partly on the grounds that there are a number of new senators in this place since the last debate took place. However, unless there have been substantial changes in the science or ethics over those four years, that does not justify a change. In fact, such an argument raises the suspicion that people are coming to this debate with predetermined views rather than seriously examining whether any substantial change has occurred in the facts of the science or the ethics over the last four years.

Neither the bill before us nor the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act 2002 nor the Research Involving Human Embryos Act 2002, as is commonly believed, regulate stem cell research. But they do regulate activities that involve the use of human embryos. The special character of embryos warrants a strict regulatory regime for research involving excess IVF embryos, and this is provided by the current legislation—namely, the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act 2002 and the Research Involving Human Embryos Act 2002. However, indirectly, the laws, including the bill before us, will impact on stem cell research by regulating a possible source of stem cells—the human embryo.

What we are considering today in essence is the fundamentally significant ethical challenge of the creation of embryos for the purpose of research and experimentation. The issue of research involving stem cells derived from human embryos increasingly is the subject of national debate and indeed dinner party conversation. The issue is confronted every day in laboratories as scientists ponder the ethical ramifications of their work. It is agonised over by parents and many couples as they try to have children or to save children already born.

Recent developments in human stem cell research and human cloning have underneath them the profound question of the human embryo. There are many and varying definitions of the embryo in medical, biological, botanic, historic and legal fields. The lack of scientific rigour in definitions renders it difficult to sustain much of the argument in favour of this bill today. On the one hand we hear regularly of the alleged great potential benefits which lie in these areas of research. On the other hand is the great question that is posed right at the starting gate: is it right to engage in research that involves the human embryo? That is the issue that must be addressed and should be the focus of our attention today.

The meaning of an embryo in past debates was considerably simpler than it is today. Five or six years ago one might have said that the embryo was a simple fusion of sperm and egg. Of course, that would have left out Dolly, the product of cloning. Some would say Dolly was never an embryo and question whether she was ever a foetus and perhaps debate if she was even a sheep. These are just a sample of the conundrums arising because of the advances in technology. Let us not overlook that we are not looking at botanic or indeed animal embryos today. One of the consequences of this bill is that it is challenging the very concepts that we have of the entities involved, and the entities in this particular instance are human beings.

One of the things that we do know is that at one time all of us that are here in this chamber were embryos. All of us were fertilised two-cell, four-cell and eight-cell embryos. If the embryos had been destroyed, we would not be here. Some proponents of the destructive embryo research as provided for in this bill try to deny moral status to all early human embryos. They have coined the term ‘pre-embryo’ to describe human embryos in the first two weeks of their development, seeking to justify destructive experimentation during this early stage. However, the term and concept of pre-embryo has never been accepted in international health, medical or ethical debate and is rejected by contemporary textbooks on embryology.

What is indisputable is that a new human embryo, the starting point for human life, comes into existence with the formation of the one-celled zygote. That is the sequence of events that begins with the contact of a sperm with a secondary oocyte, the ovum, and ends with the fusion of their pronuclei—the haploid nuclei of the sperm and ovum and the mingling of their chromosomes to form a new cell. This fertilised ovum, known as a zygote, is a large diploid cell that is the beginning, or primordium, of a human being. The embryo formed by the combination of 23 chromosomes from each pronucleus results in 46 chromosomes in the zygote, which now exists as a genetic unity. In somatic cell nuclear transfer, also known as SCNT, the egg cell’s single set of chromosomes is removed. It is replaced by the nucleus from a somatic cell, which already contains two complete sets of chromosomes. The resulting embryo contains both sets of chromosomes and also forms a genetic unity.

It is a fact that the nuclear transfer group of cells constitutes an embryo. There is the very fact that Dolly was born, and the many species afterwards in which that was done. Accepting the fact that it has a high attrition rate and it has other problems, the fact that it is capable of happening renders the SCNT outcome an embryo. Although produced in a new and bizarre manner, a cloned embryo grows and develops as a living organism in the same way as one produced by fertilisation. The only difference between fertilisation and SCNT lies in where those two sets originated. In both cases, the embryo formed has the potential to grow into a complete human being. It is known as ‘totipotent’ because its potential is total.

After fertilisation or nucleus transfer, the cell is dividing to form a ball of cells. These cells start to differentiate and become specialised a few days after fertilisation. Before they start differentiating, though, each of the cells already contains all the genetic code needed to grow into a foetus; therefore they are all totipotent at this point.

Those supporting this bill attempt to rationalise embryos with less than 14 days of life as being ‘pre-embryonic’ and available for experimentation and destruction. Make no mistake: that cluster of cells is the same way you and I, and all the rest of us, started our lives. Experiments which subject the zygote or embryo to any significant risk are the ethical equivalent of the infamous medical experiments that were inflicted on unwilling and uninformed victims in Nazi death camps. Ends do not justify the means. Thus, no matter how helpful embryo research might claim to be, it should not be undertaken if the embryo is eventually killed or subjected to a significant risk. A human zygote and human adult have equal ‘humanness’. To destroy the zygote is to destroy an actual human being, not a potential human being.

I cannot support legislation which devalues life, and which callously disregards the right of human life in its earliest stages. I find it alarming that the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs, in its final report, considered that embryos formed by fertilisation of eggs by sperm may have a different social or relational significance from embryos formed by nuclear transfer, and hence justified its recommendation to use not only SCNT but, more alarmingly, animal eggs to form hybrid embryos with the nucleus of a human cell.

Proposals to use nucleus transfer techniques in human stem cell research raise a further set of concerns in addition to those of the created embryo. Appropriate sourcing of the thousands of eggs that are needed for SCNT research and experimentation is the first of these concerns. SCNT requires human eggs, which can only be obtained from women. The most common source of these eggs today is eggs that are produced and are in excess of the clinical need during IVF treatment. The IVF egg harvesting procedure in itself carries some health risks—and even the risk of death.

Ovarian hyperstimulation is an extremely painful and risky egg harvesting procedure that millions of women will be required to undergo for embryonic stem cell research to be used widely. It is estimated that the lowest number of women required in order to use embryonic stem cell treatments for diabetes in America—just one disease—is 29 million women. The process of ovarian hyperstimulation involves an intense regimen of hormone shots followed by an extremely uncomfortable egg-harvesting procedure and poses the risk of impaired future fertility, stroke and death.

The question is: how is it that large numbers of women will be enticed to part with their eggs, given those risks? It follows that egg harvesting will result in the commodification and commercialisation of women’s ovaries, and the exploitation of women with financial difficulties, those from a lower socioeconomic background, with lesser education and without the opportunity to fully comprehend the risks and give informed consent. According to the World Health Organisation, these deaths are rare and occur about once in 50,000 treatment cycles. However, if we consider the ratio of the millions of women from whom eggs would need to be harvested for just one disease, that would translate into hundreds, even thousands, of deaths.

Let me now turn to the arguments, firstly, that there are no good alternatives to embryo research and, secondly, the great potential benefits that are going to come from embryo research, meaning the development of all kinds of products which will help to save the lives of millions of people. Apart from the veracity of that claim, it raises another issue which I believe does not get the important attention it deserves in this debate—that is, the question of who is going to benefit. We already know of many examples around the world where people have diseases that we can treat now, with our existing medical technology, but they do not benefit because they do not have access to those known treatments. We also know that 11,000 children die every day from a lack of clean water, yet often you hear in this debate how this is going to be good for our children. We may well ask: which children are those?

Claims made by those proponents of a looser regime on embryonic stem cell research and experimentation—that is, those who do not see a problem with killing human life at its earliest stages—reveal a pattern of public, deceptive hype. The advocates of embryonic stem cell experimentation list a large number of conditions to support their rejection of ethical concerns and list exaggerated promises of dramatic cures for cancer, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, kidney disease, multiple sclerosis, macular degeneration and a host of other diseases.

I do not question the use of adult stem cells in the treatment of current conditions, but the fact remains that there is no evidence of any therapies for any of these diseases becoming available in the near future from embryonic cells. The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the world’s best funded stem cell institute, predicts that there will be no cures for at least 15 years from embryonic stem cells. In the five years since human cloning to generate stem cells was legalised in the United Kingdom, no clinical therapies have emerged or even seem likely. Indeed, the natural propensity of embryonic stem cells to exhibit chromosomal abnormalities and the abnormalities of cloned mammals act against any future likelihood of success.

The hype and misinformation surrounding the false claims of the potential benefits of embryonic cell research are no justification for the creation of embryos for the sole purpose of conducting scientific experiments. It must not diminish our moral responsibilities in relation to the embryo. Indeed, I draw on the Lockhart committee’s own words on page xiv of their report where they state:

Conversely, where benefits are not yet established, or where there is widespread and deeply held community objection, then total prohibition through the legal system may be justified.

This is precisely what is before us—benefits which are neither clinically nor therapeutically evident, nor likely in the foreseeable future, and, judging from the volume of correspondence to my office, research which is objected to by a significant section of the community. It simply does not follow that the Senate committee should conclude that our community standard has so changed in three or four years that it be reflected in the finding that the creation of embryos specifically for experimentation and destruction is permitted, provided only that the experimentation is aimed at improving the lot of humanity.

Equally abhorrent is the recommendation of the Lockhart committee that animal-human hybrid clones be produced. It states on page 172 of its report:

In order to reduce the need for human oocytes, transfer of human somatic cell nuclei into animal oocytes should be allowed ...

This is an unacceptable alternative to mass harvesting of eggs from women. Stem cells can be derived from sources other than embryos—from adult cells, from umbilical cords that are discarded after babies are born and from human placenta, bone marrow and other adult tissue. Research on these types of stem cells is promising and is delivering results. Many patients suffering from a range of diseases are already being helped with treatments developed from adult stem cells. Other methods of harvesting stem cell lines where embryos are not destroyed are just as effective at producing stem cells and should be fully explored as the first option. There are no specific and credible reasons why Australia needs to approve therapeutic cloning. Recent international scientific developments report ‘reprogramming’ of adult cells to work virtually as embryonic stem cells for the generation of patient-specific cell lines for transplantation or for modelling different diseases.

I am a strong supporter of science, technology, research and development, and I certainly want biomedical research to produce cures for terrible diseases. But there are alternatives to creating embryos for experimentation and research. We should not abandon respect for life by denoting embryos as a means to an end or by creating them with the intent of rendering them less equal by virtue of the nature of their creation. My position on this bill is that of being pro human values. I cannot support any legislation that gives science the justification to create human life only so that it might be experimented on and destroyed without respect for the dignity of that potential human life. I opposed the Research Involving Human Embryos Act in 2002 as a bridge too far. This bill attempts a bridge even further and I reject the bill in its entirety.