Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities, Carers and the Voluntary Sector) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to address a matter that should be of concern to every member of this chamber, particularly those who were here during the last parliament, in the closing months of 2006. At that time we dealt with a private member’s bill, sponsored by former Senator Kay Patterson, that gave rise to the recommendations of the 2005 Lockhart review on human cloning and embryonic stem cell research. That debate was a particularly difficult one, and I know that members of this chamber at that time deliberated long and hard over the details and their vote. The crux of the debate centred around the status of the human embryo and whether or not potential treatments for all sorts of ailments and conditions arising from embryonic stem cell research and cloning outweighed the respect due to nascent human life.

Ultimately, the debate was resolved in the affirmative and, as a result, the cloning of human embryos was allowed under limited conditions. Those conditions were expressed in amendments to the Research Involving Human Embryos Act 2002 through the Patterson bill. The form of those conditions expressed the concerns that, while we were willing to allow human cloning and the destruction of human embryos, limits needed to be set that recognised the discrete nature of the human embryo. We said, quite rightly, that a licence to use excess ART embryos and human eggs to clone a human embryo could only be granted if the intended outcome could not be achieved by other means and if there was a likelihood of treatment outcomes.

Almost a year after that debate, on 7 November 2007, the science of human cloning abruptly became redundant. As many will know, it was then that two leading cloning scientists, almost simultaneously, developed direct reprogramming of human skin cells back to the embryonic state. These induced pluripotent stem cells, or IPS cells, are the exact equivalent of embryonic stem cells, created without the need for embryonic destruction—a win-win, if ever there was one. IPS technology continues to develop at a pace, while no-one has yet cloned a human embryo.

I would have thought that following such developments the licensing body of the National Health and Medical Research Council would have said, ‘That’s it! Hallelujah! There’s no need to consider licences for embryo research and cloning. Let’s break out the champagne and get on with getting some outcomes.’ But that was not the case. On 16 September this year the NHRMC granted three licences for human cloning to Sydney IVF Ltd. All of these licences will use clinically unusable human eggs to attempt human cloning and one will, additionally, use DNA from existing embryonic stem cell lines to the same end. I say ‘end’ deliberately, because none of the licences express any outcome at all that even remotely resembles a treatment or treatment potential. These licences have been granted for the sole purpose of attempting to create a cloned human embryo and developing the techniques to do so.

Ends and means are very important concepts here. When we deliberated long and hard over the Patterson bill, through the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs inquiry and, indeed, the Lockhart review, we as a body, as I saw it, were convinced that the ends justified the means. Whatever we might have believed individually about the status of the human embryo, we as a Senate were convinced that the scientific El Dorado of cures and treatments using embryonic stem cells from cloned human embryos was a worthy end.

For the benefit of those who read this and for my colleagues who are listening, I draw their attention to the wording, in part, of section 21 of the Research Involving Human Embryos Act 2002, which the Patterson bill amended to now read:

(4) In deciding whether to issue the licence, the NHMRC Licensing Committee must have regard to the following:

(a) restricting the number of excess ART embryos, other embryos or human eggs, to that likely to be necessary to achieve the goals of the activity or project proposed in the application;

(b) the likelihood of significant advance in knowledge or improvement in technologies for treatment as a result of the use of excess ART embryos or human eggs, or the creation or use of other embryos, proposed in the application, which could not reasonably be achieved by other means—

As I said earlier, such advances in treatment can now be reasonably and easily achieved by other means—that is, by the use of IPS cells direct-reprogramming technologies. As Dr David van Gend, from Australians for Ethical Stem Cell Research, said:

The research goal for SCNT cloning is to obtain “patient-matched” stem cells for researching a patient’s disease. We all know there is now a superior, entirely ethical alternative to reach the same research goal. The science of SCNT cloning, which politicians promised would bear such miraculous fruit is now, with every month that passes, visibly withering on the vine.’

How then is it that the NHMRC Licensing Committee could see fit to approve not one but three licences for SCNT cloning for Sydney IVF Ltd? I have written to the head of the NHMRC, Professor Warwick Anderson, seeking answers because it really irks me that of the three licences that were granted to Sydney IVF Ltd ‘not one expressed an outcome that could be remotely construed as having any potential medical benefits’—to use the terminology of the community affairs committee report.

One licence uses DNA from an embryonic stem cell in SCNT to try to produce embryonic stem cells. To me, that sounds like a sophisticated version of the perpetual motion machine. Another licence uses the DNA from cumulus cells that surround a human egg in SCNT to try to produce embryonic stem cells. No future possible benefit is stated. Essentially, the NHMRC, to my observation, has given Sydney IVF licence to play at cloning and little, perhaps nothing, else. The ends in this exercise are not the ends that we debated and certainly not the ends that the Australian public, by and large, understood to be the benefit of our deliberations. As I said, I have written to Professor Anderson on this matter, seeking answers. I recognise that the NHMRC is the authority that interprets section 21 of the Research Involving Human Embryos Act. I think that part of the problem, in addition to the fact that other, more reasonable means do actually exist, is the interpretation of section 21(4)(b) of the RIHE Act, which also limits licensing by the ‘likelihood of significant advance in knowledge or improvement in technologies for treatment as a result of the use of excess ART embryos or human eggs, or the creation or use of other embryos’. In my letter to Professor Anderson, I said:

From discussions with my colleagues and others I conclude that the NHMRC may well be interpreting the first part of section 21(4)(b) as two separate statements—that is, “likelihood of significant advance in knowledge” or “likelihood of significant improvement in technologies for treatment”. I assure you that the intent was “for treatment” to be read with both subordinate clauses.

These are the ends that we as a Senate supported, namely, the likelihood of a significant advance in knowledge for treatment or a significant improvement in technologies for treatment.

I will await Professor Anderson’s comments on this, but in closing I want to say that if this is indeed an error of interpretation then we may need to amend the existing legislation to honour the work of Senators Patterson, Stott Despoja and Webber, who championed the 2006 legislation. We may also need to more clearly reflect the intentions of all members of this chamber by removing any ambiguity. In light of the breakthroughs in direct programming through IPS cell technologies, we should also consider bringing forward the statutory review of both the relevant acts. I think this is made all the more pressing considering the fact that the hope of uniform national legislation has been thwarted by the negation of a reciprocal bill in the Western Australian parliament—and, I believe, quite rightly so. This whole situation should serve as a reminder that our role as legislators is much more than the often difficult debates that we encounter. We also have an obligation to ourselves and to the Australian public to ensure that the intentions we express as a body are indeed carried out.