Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Science and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I concur with the comments made by Senator Humphries in his contribution on the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Bill 2006 that this legislation raises as many questions as it answers. We are debating here a choice not between science and ethics but between science that is ethically responsible and science that is not. Cloning involves the destruction of human life, and the thrust of this bill is that such destruction might one day prove to be of possible benefit to others, but to reproduce human life in a depersonalised way, in a laboratory, for the purpose of killing that life indiscriminately is to reduce it to a mere means and an instrument of other people’s wishes. It is exploitation and it can never be justified, no matter what putative benefits might be claimed for humanity in doing so.

As Senator Humphries said, much of the argument about this bill concerns the language that is being used. Let us just call an embryo an embryo and killing killing. Substituting meaningless terms or unfamiliar acronyms does not help the debate. Before we change the legislation on a conflicted issue such as this, we need more information about it and a better understanding of it. Our country’s interests are best served by well-informed legislators and policy makers and a well-educated public. There needs to be more clarity and a common understanding about the science and technology of stem cell research, even among scientists, and more understanding of and respect for the costs and risks of embarking on such a treacherous track.

I have said before in this place that I approach every piece of legislation with the same questions: what is the intent of the bill and what are its consequences? The consequences of this bill are such that I cannot support it. From a moral position, I am firmly opposed to the bill. However, there are many other reasons why, as legislators, we must not proceed down this path. The science of embryonic stem cell research is unproven and unsafe. However, embryonic stem cell research is exciting for scientists for several reasons. These cells can be propagated almost indefinitely under laboratory conditions. They can be easily genetically modified and, in principle, can be induced to differentiate into a desired cell type. However, making the embryonic stem cell convert into a specialist cell is not straightforward, and it is certainly not predictable. We hear a lot about possible cures for juvenile diabetes, for instance, but cells like the insulin-making cells of the pancreas have proved to be extremely hard to grow, and scientists believe that current islet research will provide a cure for this crippling disease, so we do not have to pin our hopes on cloned embryonic stem cells.

I am all for research that helps us to understand and arrest a disease process, but the fact is that, despite all the hype and all the media, after 20 years of research there are currently no approved treatments that have been obtained using embryonic stem cells. Why have those stem cells not been used to treat people? Because, as Senator Humphries said, there is no evidence in principle of their efficacy. They are unproven and unsafe. They have been shown to produce tumours, to cause transplant rejection and to form the wrong kinds of cells. The simple fact is that nobody knows whether embryonic stem cells will yield successful treatments or not. So, to find out and overcome the problems encountered so far, there would need to be a lot more experimentation. That is what this bill is asking us to approve, which, to my mind, is research of questionable scientific merit.

It is important to examine the practical considerations that this bill raises, and the first of those is the provision of human ova. A large supply of human eggs will be required for this. For example, to treat 1,000 patients would require in the order of 50,000 to 100,000 human eggs. Collecting 10 eggs per donor, for example, would require a cohort of 5,000 to 10,000 women. Think of the cost of harvesting those eggs, both in dollar terms and, of course importantly, in terms of women’s health. I was pleased that Senator Stott Despoja acknowledged that there are risks to women’s health in harvesting their eggs for stem cell research.

We heard of plenty of evidence at the inquiry of the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs that the process of harvesting a woman’s eggs for stem cells places that woman at risk. In order to obtain women’s cells, superovulation regimes or the higher dose hormone therapies used in fertility treatments would be applied, with subsequent health risks. While there is some debate about the degree of risk involved, there is none about the fact that there is risk involved. A growing body of evidence shows that these practices, when used for standard IVF treatments, can cause a wide spectrum of problems, including memory loss, seizure, stroke, infertility, cancer and even death.

So there are two issues to consider here. There is the extent to which superovulation used in IVF programs has been greatly decreased as developments in ART have moved to what is called ‘minimum stimulation’ and a necessity for fewer ova. As the availability of so-called ‘excess eggs’ decreases—despite the fact that there are over 100,000 eggs still in storage—the options of researchers become limited and lead to a dilemma: more eggs are needed for research but fewer are required for ART. Where are those eggs now going to come from?

Should women be put at risk to produce more eggs than either nature or their particular choice of ART intended, or should there be commercial inducements for women to produce excess eggs knowingly for research purposes? Some people might think that the latter choice sounds like futuristic fiction, but that is exactly what is happening, right now—not, as you might fear, in the underdeveloped world but in the UK. In July this year, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority in the UK issued a licence to the North East England Stem Cell Institute allowing it to offer a 50 per cent discount on IVF treatment to women who were willing to donate ova for embryonic stem cell research. So the commercial exploitation of women is another ethical issue that we as legislators must be aware of and be prepared for.

We know that over the course of her reproductive years a woman releases about 400 ripe eggs. Given that at puberty a woman has approximately 300,000 ova, the crude arithmetic suggests that her surplus requirements are in the order of 750 to one. Researchers told us they prefer fresh ova to frozen ones, as these often die, so there will inevitably be financial pressure on women, particularly poor women, to sell their eggs for experimental purposes.

But ultimately the issue is not about whether the eggs are gathered from women who are paid or from those who give them altruistically or from women who are forced to give them or from cadavers, which is also being proposed. The practice of using them for cloning purposes is just not acceptable. The Australian parliament came to this decision in 2002, and nothing has happened to change that. One thing that has happened to reinforce that 2002 decision, however, is that the Lockhart report has upped the ante to include interspecies fertilisation. The Lockhart committee suggests:

... under limited circumstances, human-animal hybrid or chimeric embryos could be used, under licence, for preliminary investigations of nuclear transfer technologies.

Why would they want to allow such practice even under the strictest guidelines: because it would solve the problem caused by ‘the need for human egg donation’. Oh, what a tangled web—we find a way out of one ethical dilemma by creating another, and it is all done in the interests of the pursuit of knowledge!

And what about recommendation 28 of the Lockhart report? This goes even further, approving for research the use of embryos which have more than two genetic parents—under licence, of course, and in order ‘to advance knowledge and investigate specific diseases and conditions’. The justification offered for this kind of activity is of course research—the curiosity factor—hence the distinction is made between so-called ‘therapeutic’ cloning and the ‘reproductive’ cloning, which opens up the possibility of genetically engineered human beings. A clone is a clone is a clone and neither language nor semantics can disguise that fact.

To an educated and intelligent audience, such as we have here, it might seem alarmist and sensationalist to bring up the matter of genetically engineered human beings. But while we may find the idea of human clones unthinkable and abhorrent, we should be aware that there are individuals—other than the discredited Korean researcher—such as Severino Antinori in Rome, and several organisations including Clonaid and Human Cloning, that are totally committed to this end. This is not just in the realms of science fiction. And the technology which would allow them to clone embryos for therapeutic reasons can equally be applied to reproductive cloning. A cloned embryo is an embryo and once the technology is there it can be used to create life. We need look no further than the Dolly the sheep exercise to see that this is fundamentally true. And it has been done. Experimentation with human beings is not just confined to the fictional world of Dr Frankenstein, or George Orwell’s 1984, or the Brave New World of Aldous Huxley. For those who say that could not happen these days, I ask you to think about some of the other inconceivable things that are happening these days at the hands of so-called educated and enlightened people—for example, people being imprisoned for years without trial and people being tortured in the name of democracy. I do not really need to go on. There are scientists who oppose reproductive cloning but who nevertheless believe that it is inevitable. Why should we as legislators be more optimistic than these professionals? It is our duty to ensure that cloning does not happen by enshrining that in law.

There is another issue that raised huge concerns in my mind during the Senate inquiry, and that was the issue around oversight and monitoring. There are those who argue that the cloning techniques would be safe from such abuse because they would be strictly monitored. Senator Patterson is confident that we can go down this path because, as she said in the committee hearing:

... there will be strict guidelines the NHMRC will put in place.

I have two problems with this. Firstly, the NHMRC evidence to the inquiry did not give me a great deal of confidence. We heard that the NHMRC has not met to consider the implications of the Lockhart bill on its resources or its mandate despite the fact that the Lockhart report was tabled last year. Secondly, guidelines have no value unless they can be enforced. The NHMRC has neither the capacity nor the power to ensure those guidelines are followed, nor does it have any rights to act if it finds the guidelines have been ignored. Are we seriously being asked to envision NHMRC staff descending like health inspectors on various laboratories? Will they be expected to see immediately what is going on and seize any offending Petri dish? The NHMRC’s submission to the Lockhart review highlighted the tensions around accreditation and licensing of ART centres and where their responsibilities lie. There is no registration and licensing system with proper enforcement powers, and there are no plans for one. So I cannot see how the government can ensure that, if embryonic stem cell cloning techniques were developed here, they would not be abused. We are being asked to put our faith and trust in scientists and in doing so we are abrogating our responsibility as legislators.

We need to support the alternative viable options. We can do this without dashing the hopes of people who suffer debilitating illnesses. Remember that there are three sources of stem cells. As well as embryonic stem cells there are adult stem cells and neonatal cord blood stem cells. What the advocates of embryonic cloning do not publicise is the fact that we do not need embryonic stem cell research. Treatments that do not require the destruction of human life are at least as promising as any approach using embryonic stem cells.

Adult stem cells can be readily obtained, usually from the bone marrow of patients. They have been used clinically about 30,000 times, so claims made about their effectiveness or otherwise are based on evidence, not dreams. It is a fallacy that adult stem cells are unlikely to be as effective. They have some disadvantages—that is true. There are risks to the donor during extraction; there is significant risk of transmission of infectious disease from donor to recipient; and these cells are, at present, more difficult to propagate en masse under laboratory conditions. The fact that they have the potential for fewer divisions is also seen as a major limitation to their use.

On the plus side, fewer divisions may be advantageous from a safety point of view because it reduces the chances of inadvertent stem cell proliferation in a part of the body where it is not desired. When taken from the patient, there is no problem with rejection. A positive finding from many years experience in bone marrow transplantation is that adult stem cells are not prone to teratoma formation and they appear to retain their self-replicating capacity while contributing to tissue development or regeneration.

Thousands of lives have been saved by adult stem cells. Campaigns that divert attention and resources away from adult stem cell research to focus on embryonic stem cell research run a real danger of slowing down and even stopping the progress toward cures that is being made in this field. They also draw attention away from the discoveries and success achieved using neonatal cord blood stem cells. More than 6,000 patients and 66 diseases have been successfully treated with stem cells from cord blood. They too have many advantages: they can become many different tissue types; they have the capacity for many cell divisions; they involve no donor risks; and they cause less graft versus host disease, in which the donor cells attack the tissue of the patient’s body, than adult bone marrow stem cells. So let us not turn away from this progress in our pursuit of new goals by methods which are unacceptable and for results which are unknowable.

In areas of public policy, the precautionary principle is used where there are deep differences of opinion. I believe what is needed here is a precautionary principle. Why the need to hurry down this path? I have thousands of emails and letters from Australians who do not want to legalise destructive embryonic research because it is destroying life—I have to say I do not have thousands of emails from people imploring me to support this legislation. Adult and cord blood stem cells create potential for regenerative medicine in the future. Even if the research on embryonic stem cells were successful, it is never acceptable to use a good end to justify an evil means. Cloning commodifies human tissue and endangers human life. I believe that as legislators we must say no to the bill now before there is no turning back. Senator Humphries in his comments started us thinking about where we go if we start down this path. It is an issue that is being reflected in many of the pieces of correspondence that I have been receiving over the last few weeks about this bill.

I think there are some people that need to be acknowledged in all of this: the unsung heroes of course are the secretariat staff who deal with the complexities of this kind of legislation. I want to place on the record the thanks of the Senate to the secretariat, particularly to Elton Humphery for the work that he has done, and to the witnesses for the quality of the submissions on both sides of the debate, because the public engaged in debate on this legislation.

As a final word of caution, Senators Polley, Hogg and I made some additional comments which are contained in the report. We believe that, despite all the evidence we heard from witnesses on both sides of the debate, this debate is about crossing an ethical line. Deliberately creating or cloning human embryos expressly for destruction in order to obtain stem cells for a wide range of research should not be possible, and we condemn this legislation for proposing that.