Second Reading
Speech
Senator JOYCE (Queensland) (5.26 p.m.)—The Senate is debating the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Bill 2006. There are decisions that are made a priori—that is, before an action—and there are decisions that are made a posteriori—that is, after an action. If the waves of misfortune are to throw a person on the rocks where they have to deal with a pregnancy unplanned, that decision is after the issue, which is a posteriori. This debate deals with the full knowledge before fertilisation so it is a priori. So this debate is definitely not the abortion debate and we should not connect the two.

I refer to repeal of subsection 20(1) of the Research Involving Human Embryos Act 2002, and substitution that includes precursor cells from a human foetus. This subsection deals with the use of ovaries from aborted foetuses and, as such, brings forward the concept that an aborted child will have its ovaries surgically removed, with all the ethical connotations that has. Under extension of the 14-day rule, a person could be the grandchild or child of someone who was never born. However, this does prove that they were quite obviously alive. The quandary is, of course, about a person of full rights whose progenitor had none—in fact, who never took a breath.

This debate does more harm than any other to those suffering the afflictions of type 1 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and spinal cord injuries, because it distracts funds and resources from proven technology and advancements in adult stem cell technology and directs them to the hypothetical and acquisitive aspirations of predominantly pharmaceutical manufacturers.

How can you look a child in the eye and suggest you have a cure for something when you know you have not? Well, results would suggest that you are doing just that when you place hope in embryonic stem cell research that has not been proven in animals. The mirage of embryonic stem cell research has absorbed a budget of $3 billion in California, $30 million for the disgraced and discredited Professor Hwang in South Korea, and immense budgets elsewhere around the world—including, unfortunately, here, where the majority of $100 million has been allocated to the National Stem Cell Research Centre. The funding is there worldwide, with no tangible embryonic stem cell results. I do not think we should feel left out if we fail to catch up in the subsidisation of the non-delivery of embryonic stem cell extravagance.

As recently as last week a liver was developed by a team led by Professor Colin McGuckin, in Newcastle, England, using stem cells from umbilical cords. This is non-controversial, factual and current, and we are thankful that he was not distracted by the hypothetical results of embryonic stem cell research in this crucial development. The supposed benefits that have been inspired by research on embryonic stem cells—the treatment of type 1 diabetes, spinal cord injuries and a range of other maladies—belies the fact that embryonic stem cell therapies cannot even be proven in animals.

Professor Itescu, Director of Transplant Immunology at New York’s Columbia University Medical Centre states that much of the understanding pro-cloning advocates hope to acquire could come from animal work and that:

... returning to this approach would take all of the ethical drama out of the discussion and lay it back on strong scientific foundations.

That is, if we go back to animals, we can lay the scientific foundations that proffer the case of so many who support these bills. Surely this would seem the reasonable first step, unless there is another motivation as to why we wish to work on human life now. Another issue is that, on passing this legislation, we are agreeing with the argument that is put forward in the Lockhart report that:

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

That is stating that human life created by this technique has no rights because it has no social or relational significance. In regard to the word ‘may’ how can it be that it may have rights if its purpose is to be destroyed? Refugees have no social or relational significance. So are we by default now presupposing that they have no rights or have we come to the conceit that we can pick and choose our moral premises which can fluctuate as required from issue to issue? Do you have a basic right that others without fault do not have, even in this nation? If the embryo created was allowed to grow, would he or she be something akin to a slave, a person of no social or relational significance or would it be that a slave would have more rights because they may attain these rights whilst those conceived under this legislation would be defined as having none and no prospect of attaining any? Do we implicitly, by association in legislation, say that ovaries are now commercial property disassociated from the person and as property can be extracted from prisoners in China or aborted foetuses in Australia? These so called ‘useful parts’ will be used in their thousands as test materials for the effects of drugs on human life.

Fast forward from 2002 to 2006 and we are now engaged in another stem cell debate but this time it is about deliberately creating new embryos by the method of somatic cell nuclear transfer, SCNT, or cloning to obtain their stem cells. All of the same reasons for lifting the prohibition on frozen embryos are being used again to argue for the lifting of the prohibition on cloning. Only this time we are told the impediment of tissue rejection can be solved through harvesting stem cells from a cloned embryo of the patient.

As the Lockhart review process was in its early stages, some politicians and members of the media began to talk about the need to legalise the process called somatic cell nuclear transfer as a new way of deriving rejection-free stem cell lines that could lead to the much talked about potential miracle cures. The use of such technical terminology had the potential to effectively expunge the words ‘embryo’ and ‘clone’ from the debate, sidelining opponents with ethical concerns. However, it soon became clear that SCNT was the same process used to create Dolly the sheep and numerous other animal clones.

To its credit, the Lockhart committee recognised that SCNT did in fact create a human embryo. Lockhart chair Loane Skene did not seek to hide this. On Friday, 20 October, she told the Standing Committee on Community Affairs inquiry into the legislative responses to recommendations of the Lockhart review:

Other people have said to us that what we are talking about today, a somatic cell nuclear transfer embryo, is better not being called an embryo. We did not shy away from calling it an embryo because it is conceivable, as happened with Dolly the sheep, that if that entity were put into a woman, after a lot of care, it could in fact develop into a foetus. So we did call it an embryo.

The only difference between Dolly the sheep and Lockhart-style cloning was it would be illegal for the cloned embryo to be allowed to live more than 14 days and to be implanted in a womb. Unlike Dolly the sheep, Snuppy the puppy and Matilda the cow, Billy the human clone will never be born if the Lockhart recommendations are followed. For the first time in our history, we have proposed a law that creates human life and then mandates its destruction. To get around this inconvenient truth, Professor Skene says an SCNT embryo has a ‘different moral status’ from those created in