Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Our common humanity dictates that we all want cures for terrible diseases. This is not in question with this proposed legislation. The question is: do the ends justify the means? The question is: are the research procedures that will be legislated by the passing of the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Bill 2006 morally right or wrong? Diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, motor neurone disease, cancer and heart disease profoundly impact on the lives of so many Australians and their families and warrant the wide-ranging medical research programs that seek to find cures. However, any decision on the bill is, in my view, not about the likely future success of new research using cloned human embryos. Rather, the decision hinges on the judgement of individual members of parliament on the morality of such research: is it morally right or morally wrong? For my part, I do not believe that it is ethical to produce human embryos for the sole purpose of research and destruction, and I will vote against this legislation.

In this regard, I am deeply concerned that the deliberate production of a human embryo for the sole purpose of experimentation and destruction begins to take us down an inexorable path which redefines the way we value human life. If we permit, as the bill proposes, experimentation on cloned human embryos for up to 14 days, why not for up to 15 days or for up to 15 weeks or beyond? Why not similarly permit experimentation on human embryos created from sperm and ovum, for which there is no logically defined moral difference? Why not, in time, permit experimentation on a cloned foetus or a non-viable foetus? Once we head down this path, there is no logical, obvious dividing line. Once we deem some embryos less equal to others, some human life less equal to other human life, where does it stop? Why will we not, in time, find ourselves justifying experimentation on those in a vegetative state or the dying?

In 2002, when this federal parliament debated whether to allow experimentation on excess IVF embryos, all politicians opposed the creation of human embryos for the express purpose of research and destruction. Yet, just over three years later, a bill proposing precisely that has passed the Senate and is before us in the House. It simply highlights how quickly we can become conditioned to accepting something previously deemed highly inappropriate once we cross an ethical divide.

To create human life for the sole purpose of experimenting upon it and then destroying it challenges our respect for the dignity of human life; it challenges our respect for our own humanity. As such, this bill goes to serious ethical questions surrounding human life. In this context, suggestions that opposition to the bill is based on ignorance, religious superstition and insensitivity to the plight of those with debilitating diseases is deeply offensive.

The seven years during which I had the privilege of observing, at close quarters, the wonders of medical science as a board member of the foundation of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research only served to reinforce my belief in the sanctity of human life. It confirmed my view that the dignity of human life must be respected from conception until death—whether that conception is a result of being cloned with nuclear somatic transfer or as one who was conceived naturally. I believe that life begins at the beginning—at conception—not after 14 days, not only if created from the union of an ova and sperm and not only if those who created the embryo did not intend that it be researched and destroyed.

The Lockhart review, which reviewed the 2002 law and on whose recommendations this bill is based, did not seek to dissemble or dispute that the human embryos created through so-called therapeutic cloning could develop into a human. In fact, these scientists acknowledged that therapeutic cloning is the same science which produced Dolly the sheep. It was because they saw these embryos as equivalent to one involving sperm, with the potential to develop into a person, that the Lockhart committee recommended destruction of the human embryo after 14 days and the banning of the placing of any of these human embryos, or human-animal hybrid or chimeric embryos, into the reproductive tracts of women.

However, the Lockhart committee sought to overcome the ethical dilemma by claiming that the moral significance of a human embryo is defined, is determined, by the intention for which it is created. In other words, the review claimed that a cloned human embryo, because it is intended to be destroyed before it is implanted, should be viewed ‘as a cellular extension of the original subject’, and therefore the committee concluded:

... the moral significance of such a cloned human embryo is linked more closely to its potential for research to develop treatments for serious medical conditions than its potential as a human life.

The Lockhart review considered that the moral significance of an individual human embryo was not related to its status as a human life but rather the intention for which the human embryo was created. In my view, these conclusions confirm that the Lockhart review, on which this bill is based, deemed some human embryos less equal to others, some human life less equal to other human life, despite finding cloned human embryos scientifically equivalent to those involving sperm.

In essence, the Lockhart review, and this bill, finds that some human life is expendable, and in doing so redefines the value we accord to human life. I find this morally wrong. As well, I consider this a very dangerous path to go down. Once we cross an ethical divide, where and how does it stop? I cannot support a proposition to create human life, by cloning or otherwise, for the express purpose of research and destruction. I will oppose this legislation.

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