Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Senate is debating the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Bill 2006. The name of this bill should really read ‘the allowing of human embryo cloning bill’, for that is the central plank of this private member’s bill. It legalises human embryo cloning. All senators must ask themselves: once this is opened up, where will it end? It is significant that this is not a government bill. It asks senators to make an enormously significant decision but does not carry the authority or weight of official government backing. The cloning bill has arrived in the Senate as the result of one senator’s private opinion: that Lockhart recommendations should be given legislative force. The Lockhart review was commissioned to look at the scope and operation of the original legislation. The Lockhart committee ended up using this brief to advance the cause of human embryo cloning, of human-animal embryos. I note that neither was specifically mentioned in the terms of reference for the Lockhart committee, yet their report is written as though their brief was to lobby for human embryo cloning.

It is important to look at how the existing legislation that allows embryonic stem cell research has worked: something the Lockhart committee was supposed to focus on. Senators will recall the urgency and intensity of the earlier debate, when many agonised over whether to support research on excess IVF embryos. Basically we were given a long list of diseases that we were told would benefit from the research. Understandably, that persuaded many senators to vote for the original legislation in 2002. Everyone was very careful then to draw the line at creating embryos for research—even the mover of the bill before us now. The thinking was: ‘These IVF embryos are excess to requirements. They would succumb otherwise, so why not put them to a good cause and get wonderful results in the long, long list of diseases which need cures?’

How many senators are aware of what has happened since? Surely we could have expected a long list of studies into various diseases using the excess IVF embryos. Surely we could have expected many licences issued, many applications sought and great gains on the road to cures for the long list of diseases held out like a cart of carrots to get the votes for the original bill. As was made clear by the NHMRC in answer to the Senate committee on the bill, only one licence has been ‘issued for the generation of embryonic stem cell lines aimed at treating a specific condition. To date, 30 of these excess ART embryos have been used, resulting in the production of the stem cell line Endeavour 1.’ One licence, 30 embryos and one specific condition target downstream is not much of an innings since 2002. Now the same people who urged us to vote for embryo research in 2002, the same people who put forward a long list of diseases but have yet to research them, are coming to us again and saying we need human embryo cloning so we can research this long list of diseases. The question is: what have they been doing since 2002?

Surely we are entitled to see something significant on the table before we take the huge step of allowing human embryo cloning. No matter what your ethical background, everyone agrees this is a major step. Otherwise there would not be such serious penalties, like 15 years jail, in this bill for its abuse. Therefore, as legislators, we are entitled to know just how much evidence there is to support such a huge step being taken. If we measured the progress of the research by the height of this chamber, embryonic stem cell research would reach the desktop, adult stem cell research would reach the press gallery and the skylight would be the ultimate goal of disease cures. So we have a long way to go. Even Lockhart, on page 42, describes the progress this way:

Since 2001, most of these trials have involved AS—

that is, adult stem—

cells because, at this stage, ES cell research has not reached the stage needed to start clinical trials (ie proof of principle of a safe and efficacious treatment in animal models).

The other thing is that the existing embryo research legislation allows enormous progress to be made without changing the regulatory environment at all. So under the existing legislation we could actually get embryonic research much higher up without needing the cloning bill at all. The Senate committee heard evidence from scientists on all sides of the debate that bears this out. Embryonic stem cell researchers told the committee that work can and must go on on things like proof of principle, animal studies, the instability of embryonic stem cells and their inherent capacity to form tumours, and even learning whether cloned embryos will actually be of help to science at all. All this can be done under the current laws.

For all this hype about cloning, no-one has yet actually produced a human embryo clone, let alone developed embryonic stem cell lines from it. The South Koreans told the world they had done this but that research was found to be totally fraudulent. The lead researcher is now in court confessing to dealings with the Russian mafia to get animal tissues for his lab. The Lockhart report relied heavily on the Korean studies in the section on developments in human cloning. Three published papers were cited in that section. Two were from the discredited Koreans.

To recap, we are being asked to sanction human embryo cloning to cure a long list of diseases that we were told in 2002 would benefit from the original bill. Since that time, there has only been one licence given with the eventual aim of treating a specific condition. The existing legislation allows Australian scientists to do major research without changing the legislation.

I would like now to move on to another key argument which is absolutely vital to confront. If we allow human embryo cloning, we allow the development of a technology that can be used to clone human beings. It is, after all, the same process used to create Dolly the sheep. Former Queenslander of the Year, Professor Alan Mackay-Sim, told the Senate committee:

I do not see a distinction in the technology between making a blastocyst one way going to therapeutic cloning and one way going to cloning human beings. I think that process is the same, and I think that is the ethical decision that is being made. If you go by the history of technology, that technology will be used for purposes for which it was not intended in the particular jurisdiction—that is, to do therapeutic cloning.

Professor Mackay-Sim was asked whether there is anything being proposed in the new cloning legislation that would prevent Australian technology on cloning being used by someone overseas for reproductive cloning. He answered:

Not that I am aware of; as soon as something is published, either in a paper or in a patent, it is in the information cyberspace.

The salient point is that, regardless of the heavy penalties imposed in Australia to stop human reproductive cloning, we cannot stop Australian made cloning technology from being used overseas for full human being cloning. Science is international. Once research is published, it is in the public domain. We cannot honestly stand up here and say it is okay to allow human embryo cloning because we will not be allowing reproductive cloning. Of course we will be. We will be signing off on the research that someone somewhere outside Australia will use for reproductive cloning. There will be nothing we can do to stop that cloning technology being used elsewhere for reproductive cloning.

The bill before us limits the life of the embryo clones created in Australia to 14 days. No doubt in a few years time the same people with the same long list of diseases will want to extend 14 days to 28 days and so on. Having accepted 14 days, how can we argue that this time should not be extended in the future? I am disturbed by how far the goal posts have been moved since 2002. It seems that we are being asked to judge these terribly significant questions based on hope and faith alone—hope and faith in the people armed with a long list of diseases who have as yet failed to deliver on the 2002 gift that this parliament made them.

Some scoff at the so-called ‘slippery slope’ argument. Have they read the guidelines issued by the International Society for Stem Cell Research, which is headed by an Australian and has several Australian office-bearers? The ISSCR is not 100 per cent opposed to full human cloning. It qualifies its opposition by saying: ‘Given current scientific and medical safety concerns, attempts at human reproductive cloning should be prohibited at this time.’ Professor Paul Simmons appeared before the Senate committee as a consultant to the Australian Stem Cell Centre. He is also President of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. When questioned, Professor Simmons tried to explain it this way:

Input to that was sought from more than 20 countries. And you have to appreciate that in those countries guidelines vary enormously around the stem cell arena. You can appreciate the difficulty. It is a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none problem. You have to try and represent the views that many research scientists around the world in this area are trying to put forward. In the end, that is what they came up with.

So we have a situation where not even an international society advocating human embryo cloning and led by Australians can get its members to be resolutely opposed to reproductive cloning into the future, but only ‘at this time’, given ‘current scientific and medical safety concerns’.

And it is not just overseas that there is resistance to an outright ban on human reproductive cloning. Here in Australia we have a learned paper from a Melbourne university academic calling for a debate on public funding of human reproductive cloning as a means of procreating for singles and homosexuals. Daniel Elsner wrote an article entitled ‘Just another reproductive technology? The ethics of human reproductive cloning as an experimental medical procedure’, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics in October this year. He states:

There are other people, also desiring genetically related children with minimal “foreign” DNA, for whom HRC—

human reproductive cloning—

could also be the desirable method of procreation, for example, single people or homosexuals.

People wishing to reproduce by cloning should be able to do so, provided that there is no reasonable alternative, and trials of HRC as an experimental medical procedure should not be prohibited.

So there is someone from Australia putting that point of view. The point is: if there are already Australians arguing for this, and if the international body for stem cell research can only give qualified support to opposing human cloning, how long will it be before this chamber is confronted yet again with a bill to allow human reproductive cloning by the same people with the same long list of diseases?

I do not believe that science should be unfettered in this way. Every activity in our society is regulated to some degree. Research projects are assessed according to criteria and merit. Hurdles have to be overcome. Proponents have to prove their worth to justify grants and access to resources in medical research. The time-honoured way is through peer review publication, animal studies and so on up to the clinical stage. The cloners are arguing that, while they do not yet have the science to prove what they are saying—no embryonic stem cell clone has been created, nor have stem cells been derived from it—they deserve to be let off the leash because of the hope they offer to cure a long list of diseases.

There comes a time when you just have to deliver on some of those promises, and I would suggest that that time is now. If you cannot, then it is time to go back to the drawing board, using the existing legislation, and get on with some hard scientific work. It is surely right that, after all the pain we went through as a parliament in 2002, we should at least see something for it before we are asked for a much more serious thing: human cloning technology. It is just too far, too soon, on too little evidence. There are so many scientific arguments to chase down in this debate and there is so much division between scientists, which I would argue is a point against this bill. When you are considering such a significant thing as human embryonic cloning, I would think it almost mandatory to have scientific agreement on it—and there most certainly is none of that. Even our Chief Scientist, Jim Peacock, is at odds with the Lockhart committee over the use of animal eggs in embryonic cloning. This bill today asks us basically to pass a vote of no confidence in Australia’s Chief Scientist, because it rejects his call for the ban on animal eggs for cloning. If there are major splits like this within the scientific community then I think that makes it particularly impossible for us lay men and women to judge where the true science lies.

A reasonable alternative is to adopt a wait and see approach. Wait and see what the current legislation delivers. They have only given out one licence for research aimed at a specific condition. Let us see some further progress before giving the green light to human embryonic cloning, because if we give it a green light in Australia and our scientists deliver then we will be giving the green light to human reproductive cloning somewhere in the world. I simply cannot give that green light.