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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Thursday, 1 April 2004) . . Page.. 1566 ..

human embryo containing genetic material provided by more than two persons. So it bans cytoplasmic transfer, which is a new artificial reproductive technology technique that may assist some older women to achieve pregnancy. The bill also bans other practices, including mixing human and animal cellular material in an embryo, and the commercial trade of human eggs, sperm or embryos.

It needs to be understood that this legislation is relatively conservative by international standards. For example, this bill bans somatic cell nuclear transfer, which is currently permissible in the United Kingdom, Israel and non-national institutes of health funded research in the United States. It bans cytoplasmic transfer, which is permissible in Italy, the USA, Israel and Taiwan. It also bans germ line gene therapy, which may have considerable benefits in terms of overcoming heritable diseases such as spina bifida.

Section 13 of the bill makes it an offence to create an embryo other than by fertilisation of human egg by human sperm. Currently there are two technologies that can achieve this: embryo splitting, which also occurs naturally in the case of identical twins, and somatic cell nuclear transfer, in which a somatic cell from a child or adult is placed in an enucleated egg. Somatic cell nuclear transfer is the technology that produced Dolly and other animal clones.

Somatic cell nuclear transfer can also be used to develop an embryo that is subsequently used to derive stem cells, with the theoretical advantage that these stem cells will be immunologically identical to the donor of the somatic cell. Their use is sometimes referred to as therapeutic cloning. This term is in common usage around the world to distinguish such approaches from reproductive cloning, in which an embryo created by this technology is implanted in the mother to produce live offspring. However, as Dr Breen from the Australian Health Ethics Committee has stated, the term “therapeutic cloning” collapses both therapeutic and non-therapeutic research on embryos and also the distinction between destructive and non-destructive research on embryos.

I think that the argument against therapeutic cloning as a term is actually quite well made and that there is a very good case for us to be quite distinct and very clear about the distinctions between therapeutic and non-therapeutic and destructive and non-destructive. Certainly more accurate nomenclature would be of considerable benefit in the public debate on these issues. However, in one sense, it is not an issue as both reproductive and so-called therapeutic cloning are banned by this legislation but I think it is important that we do discuss the terms that are being used in the broader community for this debate.

Section 16 of this bill prohibits developing a human embryo outside the body of a woman for more than 14 days. This means that human embryos created by ART must be implemented, stored or allowed to succumb if they are unsuitable or excess before the 14th day of their development. I understand that this is the usual clinical practice for ART embryos to be implanted when they have reached between three and seven days of development.

The National Health and Medical Research Council advised the Senate inquiry into these issues that the prohibition on maintaining an embryo in vitro for longer than 14 days is based on scientific evidence which indicates that, beyond 14 days development in vitro, an embryo is unlikely to have the capacity to implant in a woman’s uterus. Implantation

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