John Anderson (Gwydir, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I contribute to this debate with a somewhat heavy heart, because I am astounded that in just four years, on the basis of such extraordinarily little evidence of any scientific movement, we have gone from a position of very resoundingly rejecting cloning to one in which we are now seriously proposing that it be adopted. We have brushed aside all of those warnings that we really were on some sort of slippery slope, yet any objective analysis of how quickly we have moved on this issue would suggest that it has been an extremely well-oiled slippery slope. One wonders just what we might be asked to adopt or support next if we adopt this measure.

It is just over four years ago since this House voted—without dissent—to prohibit the creation of a human embryo by any means other than fertilisation, including cloning. We are now being asked to support technologies which are precisely the same as those that brought Dolly the sheep into being in relation to human genetic material. It ought to be remembered that the then Minister for Health and Ageing, who has now moved this private members bill that has brought the debate on, said:

I believe strongly that it is wrong to create human embryos solely for research. It is not morally permissible to develop an embryo with the intent of truncating it at an early stage for the benefit of another human being.

No-one questioned that then. But, just four years on, with no ethical basis whatsoever for a change in the position and, so far as I can tell, the absolutely thinnest of scientific justification for any change, we are being asked to turn that on its head.

We were assured back then that there were more than sufficient human embryos in frozen storage in IVF clinics, no longer required by the couple for whom they were made and therefore available for research, including the extraction of embryonic stem cell lines. They, or some, said: ‘That will be enough; we won’t need any more. We won’t come back for any more.’ The National Health and Medical Research Council has reported that there were 104,830 embryos in frozen storage in 2003. As at 31 March 2006, only 122 excess ART embryos had been used under the four licences issued to allow the derivation of human embryonic stem cells. So let us, at the outset, nail one thing: it is clearly not the case that the stockpile is exhausted.

As I touched on a moment ago, those of us who in 2002 cautioned that a vote for research on these so-called excess ART embryos would sooner or later lead to a demand for the production of human embryos by cloning were accused of scaremongering. We were urged very strongly to stop talking about the slippery slope. Yet, here we are, faced with a bill, the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Bill 2006, that would allow the creation of human embryos by cloning with the intention that each embryo so created would be destroyed in the name of scientific research. As Cardinal George Pell has warned, this bill would allow the creation of two classes of human beings: those intended to live and those marked for death.

There are those who say, ‘We can’t quite understand why a collection of cells ought to be seen as a human being.’ The previous speaker, the member for Cowan, referred to having been influenced by someone on the other side of politics. I would like to do the same tonight. I am indebted to Dr Emerson, who I think spoke very eloquently and very convincingly in this place from, I think, an intellectually unassailable position. I will quote him, because I would like to read it back into the Hansard. He asked:

What significance are we to attach to the embryo so created?—

that is, by these cloning techniques—

Those who argue in favour of this legislation effectively answer ‘not much’; it is not ... very important. Those who argue against this legislation say that this embryo is important. Again we should look at what the Lockhart committee report says about this, because it needs to grapple with this new ethical issue. It says—

and he then quoted from the Lockhart committee report:

... the Committee found that, while it was difficult to logically define a moral difference between embryos formed by fertilisation and those formed by nuclear transfer or related methods—

and we need to remember that such an embryo, if implanted in a woman’s womb, would have the potential to grow into a cloned human being—

it appeared that embryos formed by fertilisation of eggs by sperm may have a different social or relational significance from embryos formed by nuclear transfer.

I find that so thin as to be contemptible, I am sorry to have to say—I genuinely do. I find it indefensible and I cannot believe that members of this parliament could accept that that is an adequate safeguard against the appalling potential for opportunism and for a shifting morass of values attached to different potential lives. Dr Emerson went on to say:

Those are the key words: ‘a different social or relational significance’. This becomes the new ethical definition: if an embryo has a social or relational significance, we should respect it and protect it; if an embryo does not have a social or relational significance, we should not worry about its destruction. What a subjective judgement that is. Who is going to go around Australia and the world deciding whether a particular embryo has a social or relational significance? That is very worrying. It is very dangerous territory to have such subjective judgements made outside of this parliament by people who just determine on the basis of their own view of the world whether a particular embryo that has been created has a social or relational significance. As Father Frank Brennan argues, this is very dangerous territory.

When does a cloned embryo attain such a social or relational significance that it then demands, according to those who wrote the Lockhart report, proper consideration, respect and protection? Apparently—

the good doctor notes sarcastically, and I join him in his sarcasm—

the answer to that is on the 14th day. How about that! On the 13th day, this embryo does not have a social or relational significance. On the 15th day, it does have a social or relational significance. So, on the 14th day, we will destroy it to prevent it getting a social or relational significance on the 15th day. That there is something magical about the 14th day is—

surely—my own word—

an absurd proposition.

I join with Dr Emerson in saying that I do not know where the boundary is once you decide on 14 days. I do not know where it stops, and that is why I believe that this is so dangerous.

This year is the 200th anniversary of the ending—in our civilisation, if we broadly define it in Western terms—of the slave trade. We ought to remember that the history of our civilisation is marked by the struggle to include others as acknowledged members of the human family. There was a time when, if you did not have relational or social significance because you were black, you were a ‘good and chattel’. That is the way you were described. The infamous Dred Scott decision by the US Supreme Court defined black American slaves as ‘chattel property’ rather than persons, under the United States Constitution. In the United States it took a civil war to overturn that proposition. In Britain, it was the persistence of parliamentarian William Wilberforce, backed by many others, over decades, which led to the abolition of the slave trade and the emancipation of all slaves throughout the British Empire.

We need to be very careful indeed about saying that some person has a value, some life has a value or some potential life has a value because it has relational significance and is wanted and another does not because it does not have the same significance. That is a territory from which we have freed ourselves, and the beneficiaries down through the ages can be numbered in the tens of millions. I suggest that we need to be very careful indeed not to forget our history. James Sherley, MIT professor and graduate of Harvard, a black American from Tennessee, wrote these words in response to the decision to allow the cloning of human embryos at Harvard:

People value foremost the lives they know and understand. The drive to protect the lives of those we know and love is instinctive for individuals and societies. Much of human ingenuity has been dedicated to preserving ... life. Thus, with caring, nursing, and technology, we hold and protect our living who cannot move, who cannot communicate, who cannot awaken, who cannot grow, whose hearts cannot beat unaided, and who cannot breathe.

We even fight to reclaim our living from the sudden death of heart attacks. A defining feature of our humanity is that we also have the capacity to do the same for others whom we do not know. If the hands of members of the Harvard review board were sensitive enough, they could come to know human embryos better. They could feel that the smallest such embryos, like us, are warm to the touch, that they move as they grow, and they breathe just as surely as we do.

This is the fundamental reason to oppose this bill. Rather than including others in our common humanity, it allows the creation of human embryos destined for destruction: human beings with no father, no mother and no family; human beings reduced to mere laboratory material.

Why are we really being asked to cross this line? If we do cross it, where will it lead next? One member of this House, on my side of the parliament, came to me and said, ‘Why do you oppose this?’ I said, ‘Have you considered how far we have moved, with such scant evidence and reason behind it, to get to this point? Where will we go next?’ He was struck by that and has indicated to me that he has gone away to think about it again. Those who want to support this bill all ought to do that.

The justification for allowing human cloning is a shifting proposition. When it suits proponents and when the audience does not include knowledgeable scientists, we are told that cloning is necessary to produce matched embryonic stem cells for therapies for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, spinal cord injury, diabetes and so forth—and many people have had their hopes raised by this. I have seen it happen. To a more knowledgeable audience it is then conceded, however, that such therapies are unlikely, due to insurmountable practical problems like the tendency of embryonic stem cells to cause tumours. Indeed, Professor Loane Skene has conceded that this is only about research. She made no claims in her advocacy for this bill for the potential development of new tissues, replacement tissues or organs.

It is then claimed that cloning is necessary to produce patient-specific diseased stem cell lines to study the causes of diseases and to test drugs. However, when it is pointed out that Professor Mackay-Sim, at the National Adult Stem Cell Centre at Griffith University, is already conducting such study using patient-specific diseased stem cell lines derived from cells obtained from the patients’ noses, the ground suddenly shifts again. Now we are being told that cloning is necessary to identify the factors that can reprogram an adult cell to become an embryonic stem cell. And so it goes on.

In the course of these shifting claims it is said that—and, with great respect, we heard something like it from the previous speaker—we ‘should do anything necessary’ to cure a sick child and that we must not deny people hope. Those who oppose cloning, especially those with identifiable religious convictions, are accused of lacking compassion. I think it unlikely to be seriously the case that anyone in this place lacks compassion for others. To be fair to all members of this place and the Senate, a large part of their motivation for being here is because they care about other people. I would like to very clearly state, in defence of the churches and the Christians who are usually seen as being against this sort of legislation, that I do not think you can make the charge stick that they lack compassion or concern for other people. They have led the charge to expand an understanding of the importance and sanctity of each life.

Furthermore, I noted a very interesting article in the Guardian newspaper last year headed ‘Faith does breed charity’. It was written by Roy Hattersley, who is of your political persuasion, Mr Deputy Speaker McMullan. He is a pretty distinguished former Labour minister. He was not commenting on cloning or stem cell research, except by way of illustration, but, in his article, he spelled out very clearly that we need to concede that, while it is often Christians who are ridiculed for their beliefs in relation to things like stem cell research, sexual permissiveness and so forth, it is often those very people—in fact it is usually them—that you will find manning the soup kitchens, helping the destitute and the deserted and finding a place in hospital for AIDS sufferers, when they in fact disagree with a homosexual lifestyle. I commend that article to anyone who thinks that they can seriously mount an argument that there is a lack of compassion from those who, for Christian reasons, have an objection to this legislation. I think Hattersley’s honesty is refreshing.

In relation to Australians’ real views on this, the most reliable research carried out on this issue is that conducted by Christine Critchley from Swinburne University of Technology. Her comprehensive 2004 research found that a significant majority of Australians, about 64 per cent, were not comfortable with obtaining stem cells from cloned embryos. The research also found, interestingly, that religion was not the determining factor in this opposition to cloning. Her most recent research, conducted as the Senate was debating this bill, found that only 31.5 per cent of Australians were comfortable with therapeutic cloning.

I hope that registers in this place, because I think many of us are under the misapprehension that there is broad based support for this out in the community. I am not sure that they really understand that we are talking about cloning, the same technology used to create Dolly the sheep. Other speakers have confirmed that the majority of correspondence received from constituents on this bill urges them to oppose the bill. With the concurrence of those at the table, I seek to table an electronic document containing nearly 19,000 signatures collected by Make a Stand. The document states that the signatories ‘are opposed to human cloning, which includes therapeutic cloning’.

Leave granted.

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