Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against the private member’s bill before the Senate entitled Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Bill 2006. The bill in essence enables stem cell research involving an array of embryo types. The explanatory memorandum says that a person may apply for a licence to use IVF embryos—which is already law—and to ‘create human embryos ... containing genetic material provided by more than 2 persons’.

The misconception of some of the speakers—and understandably so in this somewhat complex scientific issue we are dealing with—is that, because there is no sperm involved, the embryo is not a potential life or real life and cannot become life. I would like to refer to the speech delivered yesterday by my colleague Senator Eggleston, who is a doctor, to explain away that misconception or, if you like, out clause. He said:

... 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 making an embryo.

But it gets worse. In the explanatory memorandum it says:

... create human embryos using precursor cells from a human embryo or a human fetus ...

This is black and white. It opens the gate, without doubt, for the use of aborted fetuses, because aborted fetuses are believed to have, if not the same, almost the same potential as embryonic stem cells. The explanatory memorandum then goes on to allow for a licence to:

... create hybrid embryos by the fertilisation of an animal egg by human sperm, and ... create hybrid embryos by introducing the nucleus of a human cell into an animal egg ...

The Senate ought to note that the key words in the explanatory memorandum are ‘create human embryos’.

If you believe life begins at conception, then what choice do you have but to reject this bill? The bedrock for me is that this is a pro-life issue. Even before we get to the issue of the slippery slope of producing a cloned human or the lie of hope that is embedded in the science of such research, this private member’s bill is little different to the two previous conscience votes in which I have been involved in this parliament—that is, the anti-euthanasia bill and the RU486 abortion bill. Both bills dealt with the respect and preservation of human life from beginning to end. The private member’s bill before us today deals with life at its very beginning, yet it is no less precious than at any other time. It is worth noting that the first seven days of human life after conception is the greatest period of growth in the whole human life span. In other words, the human embryo is hurtling towards birth and an independent life in those first seven days.

During this debate over the last few months it has been said by no less than the mover, Senator Patterson, that in a way this is science versus church and that the church has many times been caught out being scientifically foolish over the centuries. Of course, people drag up the old Galileo case. I have yet to see a better example—and that is getting towards a thousand years ago. To answer that claim, I refer to the inquiry of the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs into this legislation and to quote testimony given by Bishop Fisher from the Catholic Church. Given that that is my church, I would like to use this as an example against the critics who believe that this is a church versus science issue. The bishop said:

The Catholic Church is the oldest and largest healthcare provider in the world. Its worldwide network of universities, medical schools, teaching hospitals, research facilities, hospices and nursing homes provides the best that contemporary medical science and nursing art have to offer. The church is a major funder and host for medical research. Many of Australia’s top professionals are proud to be part of Catholic health care and research. So the church is not anti science.

Needless to say, we should not be creating the array of embryo types listed in the bill. However, under these sets of beliefs I have stated, once an embryo is created it all becomes a horror story. That life is created by scientists to carve up and destroy within 14 days has all the pride equal to a Nuremberg rally—a rally of Dr Strangebloods chanting for such weird experiments as the creation of hybrid embryos mixing humans with animals. Ironically, the Nuremberg code titled ‘Directives for human experimentation’ was developed post World War Two and came out of the experience of some of the terrible research done in that era. The declaration has been updated many times since then and clearly lays out a worldwide standard. It states that you may not do destructive research on human beings and you may not use one human being and kill them or harm them in order to gain knowledge or advantage for another human being.

I have found it absolutely striking and bewildering that the delusion our scientists have placed themselves under is that the world seems to await Australia’s great breakthrough in this area of embryonic stem cell research, that if Australia does not take up the research then the world will suffer and that all they require is the time and the money—of course, the big money—yet the truth is that embryo experimentation is being undertaken in many other parts of the world already. Furthermore, there has not been so much as a skerrick of a breakthrough to match the false hope given out—and, on the strength of it, there never will be. Besides, if there is a slim chance of a breakthrough in the coming decades, it simply will not be worth the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of embryos—that is, in my belief, human life—being harvested to reach that point.

It is from a leading scientist, Professor James Sherley, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, that I draw my view that the embryo stem cell research experimentation is basically fanciful. Professor Sherley came to this parliament and outlined his views. I will quote from the Australian of Thursday, 12 October. The quote is lengthy but I think that, given much of this debate is rooted in science, it is worthy for me to read the whole context. Professor Sherley said:

... it is well known that cloned embryos and the stem cells derived from them have defects in their genetic program. These defects will certainly render tissues derived from them ineffective and potentially dangerous.

Second, cloned embryonic stem cells, as with embryonic stem cells in general, form tumours when transplanted into adult tissues. Though some scoff that this problem can be solved with research, it is as difficult as curing cancer.

The third reason is due to a fundamental aspect of mammalian biology. Embryonic cells cannot be used to replace adult tissues. Adult stems cells are responsible for the continuous renewal and repair of adult tissues and organs. They accomplish this by dividing to remake themselves and create new cells that mature to carry out the function of the tissue.

These mature cells have a limited lifetime and must be continuously replaced by the special division of adult stem cells.

Embryonic stem cells cannot replicate in this fashion and the mature cells proposed from them are not sufficiently long-lived to allow effective cures for diseases and injuries in the tissues and organs of children and adults.

Scientists in Australia who promote research based on cloned embryos may be interested in probing living human beings at the earliest stage of life, but they are certainly not going to provide any benefit in the form of new cures.

Much of this debate has been based on the hope of miracle cures of the diseases and disabilities that plague us. Hope of future cures is a great thing and has driven man, medicine and science since, and even before, Louis Pasteur. The truth, as has been well documented, is that adult stem cell research has provided great breakthroughs and advancement in this area of medicine. The hope lies with adult stem cells. All the breakthroughs announced to date have come from adult stem cells, and that includes the reported breakthroughs just a few weeks ago on the use of placenta blood, for example.

If this legislation is passed, we will cross the scientific Rubicon; there will be no turning back. The scientists who have controlled this debate to date will be back again demanding greater freedoms for their research. Their record is on the board. It does not surprise any of us that scientists who do not accept the embryo as life—that is, body and soul—will push the boundaries as far as they can. Why wouldn’t they? Yet what is disappointing is that the parliament has let itself down, because if the legislation is passed it has done what it said it would not do in 2002—that is, allow cloning. So why wouldn’t many in the public fear that the parliament will again extend the boundaries at some time in the future, given that we are already on the threshold of cloning?

In conclusion, it was the Australian newspaper in its editorial that, whilst urging the support for the bill, claimed: ‘What does it matter? The embryos are only a dot at the end of a sentence.’ In urging the Senate to reject this bill, I remind senators—let alone the editor from the Australianthat under the big bang theory the universe was a dot at the end of a sentence to begin with and that, more poignantly, we were all once dots at the end of a sentence.