Annette Hurley (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Politicians are not elected to make expert decisions about complex technical matters. I believe our role is to represent our electors in evaluating a reasonable outcome from competing interests, often in quite complicated debates such as the debate on the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Bill 2006. I majored in biochemistry and microbiology for my Bachelor of Science degree, and it was tempting to get immersed only in the scientific detail of this debate. However, it has been over 20 years since I was in a laboratory and, while not quite as deficient as some of the opinions in this debate, my scientific expertise is nothing to be relied upon.

For my scientific understanding of the relevant facts I have relied very heavily on an excellent summary, Key recent advances in human embryonic stem cell research by Dr Nicholas Gough. Clearly Dr Gough has no blame for my ultimate decision on this bill. His paper in fact removes any excuse, I believe, for voting against the bill on scientific grounds. His paper outlines that human embryonic stem cells have been derived for over eight years now and there are more than 75 fully characterised lines and perhaps 300 with unstated levels of characterisation. There have also been some improvements in tissue stem cell field research. These improvements have demonstrated greater developmental potency than previously thought, so that is some advance, but have also demonstrated some significant restrictions, which means that tissue stem cell work cannot be taken as far as the human embryonic stem cells. Dr Gough, as part of his research, concludes that ‘to maximise the potential of regenerative medicine in its totality, appropriate, non-polarised research across the spectrum of cell types’ is required.

I am convinced also from my review of the information that using adult stem cells will not, certainly over the short to medium term, substitute for somatic cell nuclear transfer. That means that by restricting SCNT technology we run a clear risk of not developing technologies that will assist human medicine.

I have to say, almost in parentheses, that I am very attracted to the proposition outlined under one of the points in the Parliamentary Library paper Therapeutic cloning: the pros and cons. It says:

Markus Grompe, a leading US researcher in the field, suggested that, theoretically, it should be possible to by-pass the embryonic stage and proceed from a somatic cell to a stem cell by over expressing a gene in either a somatic cell or oocyte. A US ethicist, molecular biologist and priest, Tadeusz Pacholczyk, favours such a future possibility because it would avoid over-reaching to a toti-potent state, that is, where a complete embryo could be developed. The somatic cells would be reprogrammed to a pluri-potent state only.

But obviously that is a future technology which will take many years to reach, if indeed it does fulfil its potential.

I think many of these technologies that we are discussing will take some time to get past even an approved research stage to a clinical stage, and I am very disappointed that this debate has encouraged some people with severe diseases or who know people with severe diseases to think that there may be some sort of cure in sight. I certainly do not blame anyone in this chamber, but I had a call today in my electorate office from a man whose wife has been recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, who was very unhappy about a report in my local newspaper that I would vote against this bill. I think it is very disappointing that vulnerable people who are sick themselves or whose family members are sick—and I think many of us would have been in that situation and would understand exactly what he is going through—might have this false hope that this kind of technology can produce cures within a few years. I think that is a very unfortunate aspect of this debate, which has otherwise produced some very interesting and good conclusions.

However, despite my view that voting against this bill will restrict scientific discovery, I do not think that it will be critical to advances in this area in Australia. Above all, my reasoning is that it is essential that such sensitive research be appropriately regulated and overseen, as it has been up to now. It is also critically important that scientific and ethical policies be monitored and enforced. But I do not think we have clarified the ethical parameters that will be tolerated by our society, and it is therefore impossible to put in place adequate policy to cover the justified concerns put during this debate. In particular, I believe we need to proceed cautiously and conservatively with regard to any science that deals with human life and reproduction. Therefore, it is a difficult decision, but I have decided that I will not support this bill.