Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Bill 2006, which allows human embryo clones to be created for research for up to 14 days. It allows the import and export of human embryonic stem cell lines, subject to quarantine laws, which have come from research practices consistent with Australian legislation, and it allows the creation of and research on embryos other than those created by traditional fertilisation methods. I congratulate Senator Patterson and Senators Stott Despoja and Webber for working together to advance the research in this area.

We have heard in the last few days many very moving speeches in the parliament, including those from Fran Bailey, the member for McEwen, and Teresa Gambaro, the member for Petrie. The member for Petrie spoke of her father’s Parkinson’s disease and the member for McEwen talked about her daughter’s medical condition. These decisions are never easy and I think it is very brave of members of parliament to share their personal experiences of illnesses and debilitating medical conditions, both their own and those of their families, in order to explain their decision making in this area.

The member for Hughes asked what had changed since the last time we debated research in this area. Originally we were not going to allow embryos created by somatic cell nuclear transfer, only excess embryos from IVF, to be used for research. The answer to the question of what has changed is that every single day our body of scientific knowledge expands. We cannot imagine today what we will know in a year’s time or five years time or 10 years time. To make decisions in this place and imagine that they are decisions made once and for all and that they will never be subject to change, particularly in areas like scientific research where there is such vast change, is unrealistic.

It has been a very difficult and emotive topic for many people in this place and many people in the community. There are strong views on either side about whether expanding this line of research is a good idea, and I have been contacted by many people from both sides of the argument stating their case. I appreciate those contacts, even from the people whom I have disagreed with. I think it is incredibly important when making such decisions to have the best available information in a scientific sense but also to have a good view of what my constituents and people around the country believe is the right thing for us to do in this parliament. Decisions like the one that we are making over the next few days require us to examine our consciences, and I have certainly appreciated the information and the views that I have received from people around the country aimed at helping me to make a decision and to examine my conscience.

Incidentally, I have not appreciated one or two letters that I have received from people threatening to organise against me politically if I did not vote the way they wanted me to. We live in a democracy and when people lose faith in their representatives they should vote against them. Indeed, I believe they should organise against them. What they should not do is expect representatives, having examined their own consciences and made a decision, to ignore the decision that they have made in good faith and good conscience because of threats made to them by organisations outside the parliament. I will always make up my mind based on the arguments before me and based on what my conscience tells me to do—never on the basis of threats from groups or individuals. Edmund Burke in the 1700s said:

Your representative owes you not his industry only but his judgement, and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

I am not going to go into the technical details of what happens in somatic cell nuclear transfer—many members of parliament have done that and I do not propose to go over it again—but I do want to take issue with some of the arguments that have been put. The member for Hughes a moment ago said that government and religion are inseparable. First I need to take issue with that. I think it is important and wonderful for members of parliament to have religious beliefs, but I do not believe that we can run the country based on the religious beliefs of some members of parliament. I respect the views of the member for Hughes and she has every right to them, but I do not believe that government can be run according to the religious beliefs of some people. If we follow that path we will end up with a theocracy like Iran or, in a Christian sense, with the Spanish Inquisition. We have to accept that not everyone in the Australian community shares the religious views of the member for Hughes and we cannot make laws based on her religious views, even if they do represent a significant stream in the Australian community.

She also said that without religion there is no morality, and I also have to take issue with that. I know many very moral people whose moral framework is based not on a fear of being punished in the afterlife but on a belief that every single day we have a responsibility to do the right thing by other human beings to the best our ability.

I also take issue with the idea that this type of research is killing human life and the statement that some people have made that this is taking a life to save a life. The embryos that we are considering in this bill are unfertilised. They certainly represent the potential for human life and should be valued as representing the potential for human life. If they were fertilised and implanted into a womb they might develop into a human being, but without those two conditions being met they cannot develop into a person. The bill strictly forbids the implantation of such an embryo into a womb and basic biology tells us that outside the womb the embryo will not develop into a person.

In normal life, a vast number of fertilised embryos never make it to blastocyst stage or to foetus stage. They do not attach to the womb and they do not develop. I think everyone in this chamber will understand that when a woman is trying to become pregnant, each time she menstruates and realises that a fertilised egg has not lodged in the womb and will not develop into a baby, there is a mourning that goes with that. But the way we respond to that is quite different to the way we respond to the miscarriage of a foetus at seven months or a still-birth, or the death of a child or the death or disease of an adult. To say that we make no intellectual or moral difference in the stages of human development underestimates the human capacity for sophisticated thought.

I understand that some people believe that an unfertilised embryo has the same moral weight as an adult human and I respect that view, but it is a view of some people; it is not a fact that this parliament must support with legislation. I would expect that people who have that view would not donate eggs for research. I would expect that they would not donate embryos that were created for IVF but were surplus. I would expect that they would not do that, but I do not think that their decision not to do it constrains or constricts our ability as a nation—for people who do not have the same moral beliefs—to make a decision to put a higher value on the research potential of these procedures to develop cures for illnesses, diseases and conditions. I do not think that we can constrain people who are prepared to make that decision and donate their eggs or embryos and tell them that they are not allowed to do that.

The member for Hughes also talked about the false hope inherent in this research. Look, I do not know whether this research will do what its supporters claim it will. I cannot guarantee that we will find a cure for motor neurone disease. I cannot guarantee that we will find a cure for Parkinson’s. I cannot guarantee that people who have been made quadriplegic by some tragic accident will regain use of their limbs. I cannot guarantee any of these things, but to say that we must not try because we offer false hope is, I think, incredibly unfair on these people. I do not see why we say we must not try because there is a danger of false hope, when the alternative is no hope.

Dr Gabriela Cezar, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin, when talking about the potential for an egg to be human life, said:

A fertilised frozen egg as is cannot turn into a human life in the absence of being transferred into a woman so while I certainly recognise the potential for life, I also think that it’s a higher and more sound moral decision to use these discarded fertilised eggs for research and perhaps benefit millions in the future.

She is talking about the surplus IVF eggs. I think the same applies in the instance that we are talking about with somatic cell nuclear transfer: that those eggs that will not make it past the first 14 days have the potential to change the way we treat some incredibly serious and debilitating medical conditions.

The research is conducted before the eggs develop what is known as the primitive streak, before the cells start to become discernibly nerve cells, skin cells or organ cells. They are at a very early stage. I think one of the confusions for people is that they actually imagine that we are talking about foetuses. We are talking about embryos whose cells have not yet started to differentiate themselves.

There is another myth that this will lead to the cloning of whole human beings. I am not even going to go there; I mean, it is just nonsense. There is another myth that there is no community support for stem cell research. It seems the opposite is true. A Roy Morgan poll from June indicated that approximately 80 per cent of Australians support embryonic stem cell research with stem cells made by merging an unfertilised egg with a skin cell where no fertilisation takes place. We have got significant support around the world: the British House of Lords, a majority of the US Senate; the American and Canadian medical associations; 80 Nobel laureates; the Australian Academy of Science and past and present Australians of the Year. There is pretty broad support for this. There is another myth that it will lead to human-animal hybrids. Again, that is nonsense. It is not anyone’s intention, but it is a very good way of whipping up hysteria in the community.

There is also an argument that embryonic stem cells are not needed when adult stem cells can be used for research. I do not think that there is any reason to say that we need to pursue one line of science or another line of science. I think these two lines of research are complementary. It is worth noting that, while there certainly is a role for adult stem cell research, these cells have certain restrictive characteristics, so they can only be used in certain circumstances. Embryonic stem cells are more adaptive and have the capacity to turn into different cell types within the human body. Stem cells from human embryos have attracted additional interest because they provide an opportunity to obtain an embryonic stem cell that is a precise match for the person who will potentially be treated. They will have their own matched cells, which can prevent immune rejection problems.

There is also the issue that, while existing laws already allow research on excess embryos intended for but not used in IVF, research using these normal embryos does not allow as easily for the study of some diseases in ways that an abnormal embryo or a specific disease model would do. I think that that is a very important point.

One of the concerns expressed is that eggs will be extracted from women in a way that is exploitative. Of course I am very concerned to ensure that women would not be pressured into donating eggs and I am absolutely opposed to the idea that women would be able to sell eggs for such research. But I think it is pretty insulting to imagine that it is impossible for women to make an informed decision to donate eggs or surplus embryos with their full consent. We need to ensure that that consent is informed and freely given, but I do not think a complete ban on therapeutic cloning is necessary to protect women from exploitation.

So the reason I will be voting in favour of this legislation is that I believe that this research, with appropriate safeguards, has the potential to develop life-saving and life-changing cures for a number of debilitating illnesses and injuries. The Motor Neurone Disease Association of Australia recently wrote to parliamentarians and pointed out that, in Australia, ‘one person dies from motor neurone disease every day. One person suffers a severe spinal cord injury every day. Over 140,000 Australians have type 1 diabetes and more than 100,000 Australians have Parkinson’s disease.’ As I said, I do not know that this research will cure any one of those things, but I believe that it is wrong for me to refuse to even examine the potential of any science that may make life better for the people we are talking about. I believe that they and their families deserve to believe that we as a society are doing all that we can to help them live with their conditions in the short term and find a cure eventually.

I think everyone in the House was very moved by the public case that people like Christopher Reeve and Michael J Fox made for this type of research. But I was even more moved by the personal experiences of and personal contact I have had with some of the 500,000 Australians living with debilitating diseases and conditions who believe they may benefit from this research—people like Robert and Kirsty, who have multiple sclerosis; Byron and Izzy, who have diabetes; and, perhaps most of all, Holly from Balmain. Holly first visited me in parliament three years ago, when Kids in the House, the program for young people with juvenile diabetes, made its first trip to Canberra. Holly was a very young and shy little girl then, and I saw her again this year. She is a more confident young woman in her early teens, but she still suffers from juvenile diabetes. She is still injecting herself every day, still having to wake in the middle of the night for the injections and still fearing the long-term consequences of juvenile diabetes. I value human life and I cannot in good conscience deny Holly and people like her the possibility of a cure, perhaps in her lifetime. I also respect the right of others to disagree with me, but I am confident in my decision and I will be supporting Kay Patterson’s legislation.

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