WHAT’S CHANGED SINCE 2002 WHEN FEDERAL PARLIAMENT UNANIMOUSLY VOTED TO PROHIBIT ALL HUMAN CLONING?
The Prohibition of Human Cloning Act 2002 was passed just four years ago without a single dissenting vote in either the House of Representatives or the Senate. Section 9 of that Act provides that “A person commits an offence if the person intentionally creates a human embryo clone”.
Many politicians, including those who supported legislation to allow research using ‘excess’ human embryos created as part of the IVF programme, spoke strongly in favour of the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act 2002.
WHAT HAS CHANGED SINCE 2002?
On 19 December 2005 the Legislation Review Committee, chaired by Hon Justice John Lockhart, handed its report to the Hon Julie Bishop, Minister for Ageing and to the Council for Australian Governments.
The Report (page 172) recommended the following key changes to the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act 2002:
Recommendations — use of human embryos created by somatic cell nuclear
23. Human somatic cell nuclear transfer should be permitted, under licence, to create and use
human embryo clones for research, training and clinical application, including the production
of human embryonic stem cells, as long as the activity satisfies all the criteria outlined in the
amended Act and these embryos are not implanted into the body of a woman or allowed to
develop for more than 14 days.
24. In order to reduce the need for human oocytes, transfer of human somatic cell nuclei into
animal oocytes should be allowed, under licence, for the creation and use of human embryo
clones for research, training and clinical application, including the production of human
embryonic stem cells, as long as the activity satisfies all the criteria outlined in the amended
Act and these embryos are not implanted into the body of a woman or allowed to develop for
more than 14 days.
The Review was required by its terms of reference to consider the operation of the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act 2002 and the need for any amendments to that Act in terms of “developments in medical research and scientific research and the potential therapeutic applications of such research” and “community standards”.
DEVELOPMENTS IN SCIENCE
In relation to developments in human cloning the Report cites as the most promising development, and as the only research on human cloning ever published in a peer reviewed journal, the work of Hwang Woo Suk:
The first report of human embryo cloning to appear in a peer-reviewed scientific journal was in 2004 (Hwang et al 2004). South Korean scientists cloned human embryos until the blastocyst stage to create ES cells. In 2005, the same group of researchers applied these nuclear transfer methods to clone human embryos using somatic cell nuclei from patients who have various diseases or injuries, to derive ‘tailormade’ stem cell lines (Hwang et al 2005). ( Report, page 58)
The Committee cited this development as justifying allowing this research in Australia:
The Committee heard that research using human cloning to generate embryonic stem cells is
proceeding in several other countries where these technologies are legislatively permitted
(eg United Kingdom, South Korea, Singapore) or where no national legislative regulations are in place (eg United States). Therefore, many respondents to the reviews argued that the prohibition of human cloning to generate patient-matched stem cells should be lifted in Australia to allow Australian researchers to continue to contribute to the intellectual and biotechnological developments in this field. ( Report, page 170)
Unfortunately for the usefulness of this Report the most promising research in human cloning – in fact, the only research claiming to have produced a human clone that has ever been published in a peer reviewed journal and the only research claiming to have successfully derived human embryonic stem cells from a human clone – has now been shown to be comprehensively fraudulent.
TIMETABLE
15 December 2005
A colleague of Hwang’s claims his research was fake.
19 December 2005
Justice Lockhart hands over Report citing Hwang’s work as justification for allowing human cloning for research in Australia.
23 December 2005
Academic panel concludes that Hwang’s research claiming to have derived patient specific stem cells from human embryo clones was faked.
10 January 2006
Academic panel concludes that Hwang had in fact never even produced a human embryo clone.
CONCLUSION ON SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENTS
Contrary to the Lockhart Report, and relying on the peer reviewed literature:
NO SCIENTIST ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD HAS DERIVED HUMAN EMBRYONIC STEM CELLS FROM A HUMAN EMBRYO CLONE
NO SCIENTIST ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD HAS CREATED A HUMAN EMBRYO CLONE
The science of human cloning has not significantly changed since 2002 and there is NO SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENT which justifies revising the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act 2002.
CHANGES IN COMMUNITY STANDARDS?
The Review was required to report on any change in ‘community standards’ in relation to the matters covered by the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act 2002.
According to Frank Brennan SJ the Review adopted a novel approach to community standards at odds with the established approach of the High Court of Australia to ascertaining community standards when required to do so by legislation.
Rather than considering any overall change to community standards the Review came up with the novel view that there is no single Australian community but “many communities” and that “ therefore any scientific exploration should be permitted provided there were not strong arguments against it from all groups, including those who discounted the moral significance of the life of the human embryo”.
RESEARCH INTO PUBLIC OPINION
The most recent in-depth research into public attitudes to human cloning was carried out by Sexton Marketing Group for the Southern Cross Bioethics Institute in January 2006.
It found that only 29% of respondents support the cloning of human embryos as a source of stem cells while 51% opposed the cloning of human embryos for stem cells. This increased to 55% when it was clarified with respondents that in these embryos are destroyed in the process of obtaining stem cells from them. (43% of respondents were not previously aware of this fact.)
Earlier research conducted by Swinburne University had found that:
Almost 30% of the sample was not at all comfortable with using cloned embryos, and the majority of the sample (63.4%) scored under the mid point (i.e. 5). Given this, and that the mean score for cloning was well below five and the modal response was zero (see Table 1), there was good evidence to conclude that the Australian public do not feel comfortable with scientists cloning human embryos for research purposes.
Although this research was published in 2004 it is not referred to at all in the Lockhart Review .
The Morgan Poll published on 21 June 2006 told respondents:
Scientists can now make embryonic stem cells for medical research by merging an unfertilised egg with a skin cell. In this case, no fertilisation takes place and there is no merger of the egg and sperm.
Respondents were then asked:
Knowing this, do you favour or oppose embryonic stem cell research?
Eighty percent responded that they favoured embryonic stem cell research.
The information given to respondents is false. No scientist has yet made an embryonic stem cell. It is also gives a misleading description of cloning. Many lay people would not understand from this description that this process would still form a living human embryo which is then destroyed by the extraction of stem cells.
CONCLUSION ON COMMUNITY STANDARDS
The Review did not apply the understanding of ‘community standards’ which is accepted by the High Court in applying other legislation.
The Review essentially argues that unless all ‘communities’ in Australia opposed human cloning then it should be allowed.
The most credible research into community attitudes to human cloning for research has found that a majority of Australians are not in favour of human cloning. (The Morgan poll gave factually incorrect information to respondents giving a false impression of what would be involved in obtaining stem cells from a human embryo clone.)
There is justification based on considerations of community standards for Parliament to consider revising the Prohibition Against Human Cloning Act 2002.