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| December 2005 Facts don’t match rhetoric in embryonic research debate Nick Minchin With the imminent completion of the Lockhart Review of Australia’s legislation permitting limited use of human embryos for scientific experimentation and barring human cloning in all forms, Australians may once again be asked to consider the ethical questions surrounding the use of human embryos in scientific research. I was, and remain, an opponent of the legislation passed by the Australian Parliament in 2002 permitting the destruction of human embryos by scientists. It is distressing that just three years after those arrangements were put in place and with absolutely no evidence that the subsequent research has advanced towards any of the promised benefits, there are those who now seek further relaxation of our rules. When this matter last came before the Australian Parliament, I argued against laws to permit research involving human embryos, based on my fundamental concern about the destruction of innocent human life. The laws enacted in 2002 permit the limited use of human embryos created in IVF programs and other Assisted Reproductive Technologies for scientific research. This research destroys those embryos. Supporters of the current laws argue that those surplus embryos are bound to die anyway, and they may as well be able to be used for scientific research – but that research actively terminates this human life. As many have long argued, there is a profound ethical difference between killing and letting die. This debate necessarily turns on threshold issues of the value and definition of life. Our moral and ethical value system must respect all human life, even when that life approaches an imminent end. Humans “who are going to die anyway” deserve the same respect and legal rights as those in robust health. Embryos are unequivocally human life – the embryo is alive and is human from the moment of conception, the moment when an egg is fertilised by a sperm. Just as we do not permit experimentation on the terminally ill, human embryos should not be the playthings of scientists. When the Australian Parliament debated these issues in 2002, it decided, regrettably, to permit experimentation on embryos, but sensibly, to put strict limits on that experimentation. The passage of time since 2002 provides no reason to ease those limits – and many reasons to reconsider the value in continuing to permit embryonic research at all. As I said then, my views on this issue do not stem from any deep-seated religious conviction. (For the record, I would continue to describe myself as a disillusioned Anglican.) But it is fundamentally wrong, and dangerous, to let stand the idea that the only people uneasy about the march of science in this area are motivated by religious belief. All humans, regardless of their faith, should hold human life as sacred – and a secular pluralist society should never leave the defence of its values to institutional religion. Frankly, in an era when the intervention of many mainstream religious institutions in public debate is just as likely to be based on the political views of some of their adherents as the core spiritual teachings of their faith, the contribution of many churches to public policy debate has been particularly unedifying. In this debate, however, I do find myself in lock step with many colleagues who hold strong religious beliefs. ______ At times, it seems that what is being advocated in the debate on embryonic stem cell research is in fact science for science’s sake. Practitioners of this research greatly inflate the likely benefits of their work just so they may be able to continue to experiment. Experiment with innocent human life. This debate goes to the heart of the ideological battle between principled conservatives and determined progressives. While conservatives are ridiculed and loathed as standing in the way of progress, widespread community unease about the direction some scientists advocate is dismissed as populist and resulting from a lack of understanding of complex issues. In fact, as in so many areas, the conservative instincts of the community are very well based. Politicians and scientists who ignore them – or worse, ridicule them – do so at their peril. Permitting the active destruction of embryonic human life is unacceptable in any circumstances, but when false expectations about the result of that destruction are cynically created, the moral turpitude is all the greater. In the seven years since research involving human embryos began around the world, none of this experimentation has led to the development of a therapeutic treatment or even a technology that doctors are prepared to put to clinical trial on humans. In the United States, we have seen advocates of embryonic experimentation encourage a view that the deaths of former President Ronald Reagan from Alzheimer’s disease or actor Christopher Reeve after nine years battling terrible spinal cord injuries might have been preventable had embryonic stem cell research not been encumbered by conservative political restrictions. Then Democrat presidential candidate Senator John Kerry said Reeve was “an inspiration to all of us and gave hope to millions of Americans who are counting on the life-saving cures that science and research can provide.” Kerry’s running mate, vice presidential candidate John Edwards said on the day Reeve died: “If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.” We hear repeated claims that embryonic stem cell research promises new treatments for a range of chronic diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, and motor neurone disease. The research is said to promise therapies that could replace dead heart muscle after heart attacks and brain tissue following strokes. But not one therapeutic treatment has been developed. The three years since we debated the Research Involving Human Embryos Act in the Australian Parliament have seen great advances in stem cell technology and its application in therapeutic treatment – but none of those advances have involved human embryos. Rather it is the use of adult stem cells taken from umbilical cords, placentas, bone marrow, nasal passages and other parts of the body where truly ground-breaking scientific advances are being made. It is becoming increasingly obvious that while the likely benefits of experimentation with human embryos are being emotively manipulated, the real progress in stem cell technology is pioneering work being done with adult stem cells – including and notably by Professor Alan Mackay-Sim and his team at Queensland’s Griffith University. Professor Mackay-Sim’s work has shown that stem cells grown from olfactory mucosa in the nose are able to give rise to not only nerve cells, but also to heart, liver, kidney and muscle cells. The Griffith University team has created stem cell lines that are being used to investigate Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, motor neurone disease, epilepsy and other ailments. Professor Mackay-Sim has said of his team’s work: “It is often argued that adult stem cells would not be as useful as embryonic stem cells for stem therapies. This new research turns this argument on its head.” Around the world, there are already more than 80 therapies in use and over 300 in clinical trials using adult stem cells, including therapies for leukaemia, skin, brain, breast and testicular cancer, multiple sclerosis, osteopetrosis, Hodgkin’s and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, spinal cord injury and stroke damage. Whether you regard this as a 300-0 advantage for adult stem cell research over embryonic work, or an 80-0 margin, the numbers are compelling. The failure of embryonic stem cell research to produce results and the growing awareness of dangers of even initiating clinical trails on humans, throw into question whether embryonic experimentation should continue at all. Experiments using embryonic stem cells on animals have resulted in the formation of tumours, chromosomal abnormalities and serious abnormalities of heart rhythm, amongst other complications. The University of Melbourne’s Emeritus Professor of Medicine, John Martin, has argued that “in no case have embryonic stem cells been shown in animal research to provide a cure that is sufficiently free of complications to warrant human studies,” and “there remains no good reason to suspect that embryonic stem cells offer an advantage over a number of alternative stem cell therapy approaches.” It is in this area of alternative stem cell therapy that Australia should focus its efforts. Adult stem cells offer much stronger medical prospects without the difficult ethical issues of embryonic stem cells. As we consider the report of the Lockhart Review later this month, we should not loosen our already inadequate limits on embryonic stem cell research. We should also maintain our absolute ban on cloning. Given their inability to overcome the complications in getting third-party embryonic stem cell technology to even clinical trials in humans, scientists in several countries have been pushing for approval for so-called ‘therapeutic cloning.’ Such cloning removes the nucleus of a donated human egg and replaces it with the nucleus of a cell from another individual. After 5-7 days of development, the resultant cloned embryo is then killed to harvest its stem cells. This experimentation is permitted in the UK and Korea, among other countries, but banned in Australia by the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act 2002. Again hyperbole from politicians on its potential is so far unmatched by results. In the five years since it was legalised in Britain, there are growing doubts about the ethical and economic merits in proceeding with this expensive, controversial work. When the British law first permitted cloning in 2000, the then Health Minister, Yvette Cooper, claimed that stem cells from cloned human embryos “could prove the Holy Grail in finding treatments for cancer, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes (and other chronic illnesses) … transforming the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.” The rhetoric has not yielded results. In Korea, scientists report having to use dozens of human eggs to generate a single stem cell line. This level of experimentation with life can surely not be tolerated. If this research were to ever lead to a feasible medical therapy, this process would have to be completed for every patient requiring treatment. Scientists already fear sufficient donated eggs will never be available. The practical, biological, and ethical problems therapeutic cloning entails are insurmountable. The British medical journal, The Lancet, wrote in a 2001 editorial on therapeutic cloning that “the creation of embryos solely for the purpose of producing human stem cells is not only unnecessary, but also a step too far.” That commentary could be even stronger in 2005. This does not even take into account the community’s understandable and utter rejection of human cloning in any form. Scientists ridicule fears that any step in this direction would take us to the precipice of a “slippery slope,” but they are arrogant to assume that they should be empowered and entrusted to create and destroy life at their will, regardless of the nobility of their medical aims. The community is right to deplore and reject any form of human cloning. One of the more absurd claims that I have encountered is, that as a former Industry Minister and current Finance Minister, I should be more focussed on the potential economic benefits of medical research on human embryos and less concerned for ethical or moral problems. Biotechnology is an important Australian industry – there are around 400 Australian companies working in this field with over 60 biotech companies now listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. Ernst & Young has rated Australia the number one biotech country in the Asia-Pacific region and the sixth worldwide. The Australian Government’s support for our biotech companies is reflected in the $1.3 billion we have invested in biotech-related research and development since 2003. Only a fraction of these companies have an interest in stem cell work – the National Health and Medical Research Council has issued nine licences to five companies to use excess IVF embryos – but to argue that we should put any economic advantage over threshold moral and ethical considerations is abhorrent. Thankfully that is a choice we don’t
have to make. Our biotechnology sector is robust and there is
no evidence to support
oft-made claims that its health is under threat unless we permit
cloning and freer embryonic research. Senator Nick Minchin is Australia's Minister
for Finance and Administration and Deputy Leader of the Government
in the Senate. His former roles include as Minister for Industry,
Science and Resources and Special Minister of State. |
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