Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, I want to go to the heart of why the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Bill 2006 will be decided through a conscience vote. The reason is that issues surrounding life, the creation of life and so on are not issues that are party political in Australia. The political parties were formed around issues in the workplace, industrial relations and the role of government. I believe it would be a very backward step if ever we did have political parties formed solely around one side of the argument on matters such as we are now debating. We see in the United States, for example, that the parties have to a much greater extent coalesced around issues such as abortion. You see that campaigns there are very much dominated by such divisive issues as abortion or embryonic stem cell research. I say: long may we have a diversity of views within political parties on these issues of life. That is why having a conscience vote is very important—because there is not a ‘party view’ on this issue.

When we weigh up a conscience vote, as members of parliament we listen to the evidence and to our constituents and we look deeply to our own experiences. As members of parliament we all come to this place with different formative influences and different motivations and we draw from different sources of inspiration. As a medical student and doctor before coming into parliament, I remember being inspired by reading the stories of historic medical advances. I think of the story of the Canadians Best and Banting, who isolated insulin from the pancreata of dogs in a small lab in Toronto in the 1920s. That discovery has improved and saved the lives of millions of people with diabetes today.

I confess that Howard Florey was a boyhood hero of mine. He was from Adelaide, studied at Adelaide medical school and grew up in the electorate of Boothby. By using the earlier discovery made by Sir Alexander Fleming of the penicillium mould, Howard Florey was able to develop the antibiotic penicillin—a development which was available for soldiers in the Second World War and has been used for the last 60 years. This was another landmark development which triggered further advances.

These are just some of the breakthrough developments in the treatment of disease in the last century. Some advances have been controversial; some have been ethically challenging. I think of organ transplantation. Organ transplantation is widely accepted today. We have a national organ donor register. Several states encourage citizens to nominate on their driver’s licences their wish to donate organs in the event of their death, and yet to harvest organs requires a very difficult determination by two medical practitioners that a donor is brain dead. It involves the harvesting of organs from an individual with no prospect of further life.

There have been a lot of comments and arguments about embryonic stem cell research. The main issue today, though, is the issue of somatic cell nuclear transfer. That is the threshold issue which the parliament must consider. What we need to do is weigh up the hope of advances through this technique within an ethical framework against the moral and ethical considerations that this technique involves.

Firstly, what is involved in somatic cell nuclear transfer? There has been considerable confusion about the science of this approach, even from some of the journalists reporting on this debate. It does not involve removing the nucleus of an embryo, which I have seen several articles state. The constituent parts of an SCNT embryo are a cell and an egg. The cell might be a skin cell. The technique involves removing the nucleus from an egg and then replacing it with the DNA from a donor cell such as a skin cell.

This would only ever occur with the consent of the person from whom the cell is taken. It would only occur with a specific purpose to remedy some ill, such as diabetes or Parkinson’s, for that individual. It would only occur for a specific purpose as determined by a patient’s clinicians. It would only occur if an application were granted by the NHMRC licensing committee. It would only occur if it were given the go-ahead by the ethics committee of the university or the hospital that was conducting this technique. It would only occur if it were consistent with the professional ethics of the college of which the clinicians were members. But ultimately it would only occur if the individual whom the therapy was for made the decision that this therapy was for them.

I have decided to support this bill. I believe that there is a range of views on the science and on this therapy. I believe that individuals can determine this decision for themselves and that it should be done subject to a very tight regulatory framework. I should point out that the chance of an SCNT embryo being a viable embryo is less than one per cent. Of course this legislation prohibits the embryo ever being implanted. It prohibits an embryo going past 14 days. SCNT is legal in Belgium, China, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

I draw to the attention of the House an article which appeared in Nature Biotechnology on 10 October 2006 by D’Amour et al demonstrating how a group in California has developed pancreatic endocrine cells from human embryonic stem cells. They have produced cells which can produce all of the pancreatic hormones. This has enormous implications for people with diabetes and indicates that the science is perhaps further advanced than any of us had thought.

I would like to say a bit on the issue of chimeras and hybrids. I agree with the comments of the Chief Scientist, Jim Peacock, who said that chimeras should not be allowed. There were very few submissions to the Lockhart review which mentioned it. I believe that the Senate amendment was a sensible one. The issue of chimeras, or animal hybrids, was much more controversial than the issue of SCNT, which we are considering.

The weight of opinion in the scientific community is in favour of this bill proceeding. The weight of opinion in the medical community is in favour of this bill proceeding. I would like to close with some words by one of our most eminent scientists, Sir Gustav Nossal. His submission to the Lockhart review stated:

Embryonic stem cell research is rich in promise. It has already demonstrated its potential in the study of disease causation, in development of new diagnostic methods and in basic research. In the longer term, the possibility of new therapies for serious diseases is real, though this will be the work of decades rather than of years.

This bill offers some hope for these therapies. Regardless of our decision in the parliament, this research will go on around the world in a large number of OECD countries. If this bill does pass, Australia will be part of that ongoing research. I support the bill.

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