Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Denison mentioned that the member for Sturt might become emotional about this particular subject, and I dare say that could be the case. The very basis of the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Bill 2006 is a dubious premise. When you go out to the electorate and say, ‘There is an opportunity to cure motor neurone disease, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease or even paraplegia or quadriplegia,’ the majority of Australians are going to say, ‘If you can do that, we would support that.’ But when you dig deeper and ask the scientists, ‘Can you give any guarantees that this is going to be the case?’ they say, ‘No, but the research may help in some way.’ So I think that the bill itself is based on emotion. It is putting a proposition to the Australian people, saying, ‘If you support this then we have the opportunity of curing all these diseases that are of great concern to the community at the present time.’ As I say, there is no guarantee that any of this research is going to give that result. I think that we have to look at that very clearly right from the start.

I do not come to this debate from a particularly religious background, but I am a Christian and I value quality of life and I value life. I come to this debate saying to myself, ‘If we are going to create an embryo’—and that is exactly what we are going to do—‘then that to my way of thinking can develop into life.’ This is not an embryo as usual. As we know, the nucleus is going to be destroyed and a cell is going to be implanted. We are going to create a clone; we are going to create a twin. If I have some research done, a twin of me is going to be created for 14 days in the name of research. I ask myself: ‘Just how far are we going to go with research in this country? Is this the gradualism that we are looking at at the present time that takes us further down this track?’ At my age I start to wonder about that.

I think I said this in the previous debate. I remember studying a book I think in my intermediate certificate by Aldous Huxley, Brave New World. That was considered science fiction in those days, but Aldous Huxley was talking in the 1930s about what we are talking about today. He was talking about test tube babies, about male and female being redundant and about us creating superbeings in test tubes. That was science fiction in the 1930s, but now we are talking about doing those types of things in the name of research. I start to worry about where we are going. I may be old-fashioned, but we have already gone a long way down this track. I accept that. In vitro fertilisation, for instance, is creating and implanting embryos, and not very successfully in a lot of cases. We are going down that area of interfering in the natural way of things by creating and implanting embryos. We have even gone down the track of surrogate mothers, and we are seeing all sorts of legal complications coming into play. We implant an embryo in another female to carry the progeny of two other people, and I start to wonder about that. All these things are coming into play, and where are we going in this debate?

In many ways we are being desensitised, because we are saying, ‘This is in the name of research and this is in the name of protracting or extending the life of a human being, therefore we should go down this track.’ Let us get one thing straight: I am not a Luddite. I think that gene technology has a lot to offer—there is no doubt about that—but how far do we go with gene technology? How far do we go without creating a Frankenstein? These are the things that we are playing at at the present time, and I am not convinced that adult stem cell research will not give us the same result. In fact, it may be even better, and the scientists are saying: ‘Adult stem cell research can give us results. We’re not sure, but we think that embryonic stem cell research might give us better results.’ I find it difficult to accept this bill. I find it difficult to say that we are going to create an embryo and in 14 days kill the embryo and use the cells for research. I do not think I can go down that track.

I think the bill is even further flawed, because the bill is saying that we are going to ask females to donate eggs. I am not convinced that we are going to get the number of eggs required from females wanting to donate to this research. We have had a lot of this in the past, you might recall, especially with artificial insemination. Male university students were paid for their sperm, and we now see the results of that. It may be only a few but we see the results of that, where children who were created by this AI research are now starting to come forward and say, ‘I want to know my natural parent.’ We create all sorts of problems when we start playing around in this particular area.

I am not convinced that we are going to get enough eggs donated by females for this particular research. Are we then going to go down the further step of saying, ‘Females can be paid for their eggs’? Are we going to go down that track? I think that is just taking that extra step, and how often do we take that extra step? How often are we desensitised? It is not a matter of morals; I think it is a matter of asking, ‘As human beings, are we prepared to take that particular step?’ Those are the issues that are in my mind and are worrying me in making a decision on this.

A few years ago we had the great announcement of Dolly the sheep. Here we had a sheep that had been cloned. It had been created from its mother from stem cell research, and all of a sudden we had this brand new technology that was going to allow us to recreate a particular individual. I do not hear scientists talking about that today, because, as far as I know, scientists have walked away from that. That particular cloning was not a success. In fact, from memory, Dolly the sheep aged as fast as its parent, so that particular cloning was not a success.

Are we going to go down this track again not knowing exactly what the results are going to be, all on the premise that this is going to deliver to us wonder cures for these particular diseases? If anyone should support that, it should be me. I had a father who died from Parkinson’s disease, I have an uncle who is terminally ill with Parkinson’s disease, I had an uncle who died from Alzheimer’s disease and I have had three friends who have had motor neurone disease. I understand how desperate the families of those people are to get a cure for those particular diseases. But there is no guarantee in this bill that, if we agree to this, we are going to be delivered a miracle cure for any of these diseases. As I said, I believe the bill is based on a false premise; it is based on the fact that the creators of this particular bill wanted to play on the emotions of people to get their way. Quite frankly, I think we are heading down the track of research for research’s sake, and I cannot support this bill.

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