Alan Eggleston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Bill 2006 before the Senate today, put forward by Senator Patterson to permit somatic cell transfer or cloned embryos to be formed, is to enable, among other things, hybrid animal-human embryos to be created. I am opposed to this legislation because I believe that the Senate is yet again being rushed into enacting laws to suit the interests of the biotechnology industry before there has been time to fully appreciate the implications of these proposals and give adequate consideration to whether changes are needed for the regulatory regime surrounding stem cell research. I am also deeply concerned by the observations of both the Chief Scientist, Professor Jim Peacock, and Associate Professor Sherley, who are on opposite sides of the debate, that federal parliamentarians did not appear to be well informed about the science of stem cell research or the ethical and regulatory considerations needed to surround the use of such technology.

The Senate first debated the issue of the use of stem cell therapy four years ago, in 2002, when a bill was put forward to permit this research to be carried out on human embryos. At the time, quite striking claims were made about the possibility of being able to provide cures for such problems as juvenile diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and motor neurone disease and to repair the injuries to the spinal cord caused by accidents, within a short period of time. For example, the public were told by Bob Carr, the then Premier of New South Wales, that such treatments would be only four or five years away if stem cell research were permitted to go ahead.

But, as of course so often happens in medical research when miracle breakthroughs are claimed, the reality was not quite so simple. This was conceded by the panel at the forum arranged in Parliament House by the supporters of this legislation a few weeks ago, when it was said that the expectation of when stem cell therapies would be available and the extent of them had been overstated in the hope of attracting support from the federal government and others for such research to be permitted and go ahead.

Today it is recognised that the time frames involved for the development of therapies from stem cells are very long indeed, because there is a great deal of basic research to be done before treatments can be considered, much less used, in human patients. At that meeting in Parliament House some weeks ago, Professor Ian Frazer—who, as you would know, was the Australian of the Year—said that therapies could not be expected to be available to treat patients for at least 75 years. And in a personal conversation I had only last week with Professor Alan Mackay-Sim, from Griffith University in Queensland, he said that the amount of basic research which needed to be done meant that treatments were decades away.

As a doctor, I would of course be delighted if stem cell research were to provide a means of treating some of the serious illnesses which afflict mankind, such as juvenile diabetes and Parkinson’s disease. But also, in this context today, more importantly as a legislator, I am profoundly concerned that the problems associated with the development of stem cell therapies are being glossed over in the haste to enact this legislation before the Senate. For example, it has emerged in the last four years that there is a great deal of uncertainty as to whether embryonic stem cells or adult stem cells have the most potential in providing the basis of further research for the development of therapies for human illnesses. Four years ago we were given the impression that embryonic stem cells had the greatest potential and that adult stem cells would be of very limited value in developing therapies. However, recently, here in Parliament House, we have heard from Professor Sherley and Professor Mackay-Sim that this assumption is far from being the case, and the balance is now tipping towards adult stem cells having the most potential to benefit mankind in treating illnesses.

Likewise, four years ago an impression was created that it was going to be a relatively simple matter to use stem cells to create new tissues to replace diseased ones by simply implanting a stem cell into the appropriate organ of the human body. It is now also clear that there are in fact some very major hurdles to be overcome before stem cells can even be considered for use in treating human illnesses.

Firstly and most basically, it is apparent that no-one has discovered how to reliably trigger stem cells to grow into specific organs such as heart, brain or pancreatic cells. In fact, I have been told by Professor Mackay-Sim that this question of reliably inducing stem cells to differentiate is proving very difficult and that no-one has succeeded in developing a method of consistently getting a stem cell to differentiate into a particular type of organ cell. Again, there is a related question regarding limiting the growth of stem cell implants which in effect could become a tissue culture in the body and keep on growing in the patient’s body, which would be quite catastrophic to the patient. Then there is the fact that stem cells from any person other than the patient would be subject to a rejection reaction just as organ transplants are.

Most importantly, cancer formation in stem cell implants is a problem. It has been confirmed that embryonic stem cells have a propensity to form a highly malignant tumour called a teratoma in 25 per cent of implants. This issue was raised by Professor John Martin, an emeritus professor of medicine at Melbourne University—as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald on 11 October this year—when he said that the risk of cancer from stem cell implants was being glossed over. He criticised the Lockhart committee for failing to highlight the risk of tumours and of genetic defects arising from the use of stem cells. Having cancer form in as many as 25 per cent of stem cell implants is a very serious limiting factor to the use of stem cell based therapies and may mean that it will be impossible for stem cells ever to be used therapeutically. Professor Sherley was quoted in theSydney Morning Herald on 11 October as saying:

“Some might say we can solve the tumour problem. It is equivalent to saying we may solve the cancer problem.”

In other words, it is a very elusive objective.

Turning to another basic issue, I would question why human tissues are being used at all in stem cell research when usual medical practice is to carry out basic research on animal models first. I have not been able to obtain a satisfactory answer from any of the stem cell scientists I have spoken to as to why animal models are not being used to conduct this research. If animal models were used there would be none of the moral and ethical issues which at present surround stem cell research, leaving the scientists to quietly work to find answers to the very significant problems needing to be solved before the use of stem cell therapy in humans could even be considered as a realistic possibility.

I am deeply concerned by the observations of the Chief Scientist and of Professor Sherley that our federal parliamentarians do not appear to be well informed about either the science of stem cells or the ethical and regulatory considerations needed to surround the development and use of this technology. An example of this is the emphasis some colleagues seem to place on the fact that sperm are not involved in the creation of a cloned embryo, apparently not understanding that sperm are just a vehicle to transport nuclear material and that they play the same role as the glass pipette in the laboratory in making an embryo.

I strongly believe that we have got a long way ahead of ourselves on this matter of stem cell research and of the potential of stem cells being used for treatments. The best thing we could do is stop and take a deep breath and realistically appraise where we really are at with stem cell research and where we are going. Today in the Senate we have before us a bill which would take the boundaries of stem cell research out much further than what was previously regarded as wise by permitting therapeutic cloning and the formation of human and animal hybrid embryos.

I am particularly concerned about the question of permitting therapeutic cloning because allowing therapeutic cloning is a threshold which, once crossed, also means the de facto enablement of cloning humans. This is because once a blastocyst is created from cloning if placed in a woman’s uterus it would develop into a baby. Senator Patterson and the supporters of this bill will say that such cloning of human beings will not occur because it will be prohibited by this bill. However, I believe the proposers of the bill are extremely naive to imagine that such a ban on cloning humans could not and would not be broken. For example, one of the leading medical scientists in this field said to me late last week, ‘Inevitably some medical scientists will not be able to resist the temptation to produce a cloned baby,’ and Professor Sherley is quoted in the press as holding a similar view on the grounds that scientists would become excited by the prospect of cloning a human being and would want to try to do this.

In developing my views on this matter I recently read a book entitled Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution by Francis Fukuyama. Mr Fukuyama wrote:

Cloning is the opening wedge for a series of new technologies that will ultimately lead to designer babies. If we get used to cloning in the near term, it will be much harder to oppose germ-line engineering for enhancement purposes—

that is, of human babies—

in the future.

What Francis Fukuyama is referring to is that the ability to clone humans, coupled with genetic selection technology, will open the way to developments such as designer humans, in which case Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World would no longer be so far fetched. I am sure that none of us in the Senate today would want to open the way to a society that in any way resembled Huxley’s Brave New World, where humans were all clones, developed in vast incubators in which intelligence and other abilities were predetermined by genetic modification and by nutrients given to embryos.

Among those who are urging the passage of this legislation are those interest groups which have consistently sought to minimalise the very real fundamental problems which need to be overcome before stem cell therapies can even begin to be considered. In my view, it is time that we as legislators of Australia called a halt to the false air of urgency surrounding this debate and gave ourselves time to consider more carefully the implications of this legislation. It seems clear to me that the only conceivable beneficiaries from rushing this legislation through the Senate are those in the biotechnology industry. However, as Francis Fukuyama says in his book:

It is important to lay down a political marker at an early point to demonstrate … that societies can take some measure of control over the pace and scope of technological advance.

In conclusion, I urge all senators to give full consideration to the implication of the Patterson legislation, permitting therapeutic cloning and animal-human hybrid embryo formation. I urge you all to reject this legislation on the ground that insufficient time has been given for senators to become fully aware of the actual state of play in stem cell research or of the need for basic problems to be overcome before consideration can be given to developing clinically useable stem cell based therapies, much less the need to permit therapeutic cloning and the creation of animal-human hybrid embryos with all the implications such a decision entails.