Page 942 - Week 03 - Thursday, 3 April 2008
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by enabling the patient’s own cell nucleus to grow new tissue that will match the patient’s body, thereby eliminating the risk of immune system rejection which the recipients of organ transplants currently can experience. It will allow medical science to better understand how disease occurs and, importantly, how cancer cells behave.
However, there is a lot of research to do. Embryonic stem cells have a tendency to produce tumours and malignant carcinomas, to cause transplant rejection and to form the wrong kinds of cells.
The Greens believe that the potential of this bill is to enable research to relieve suffering, treat disease and improve human dignity, and this is so great that it is unethical to deny the benefits to the many people who could benefit from the research, assuming that there is a framework of safeguards and scrutiny and assuming that cells are not allowed to propagate beyond 14 days or be implanted in a woman’s uterus.
The Greens believe that this bill provides sufficient safeguards for constructive and ethical research. More than that, I believe we have a responsibility to those who are suffering from debilitating diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, of which my own father died, cardiovascular conditions, cancer, spinal cord injury and motor neurone disease to explore this research. These diseases carry a burden that is physical, emotional and financial for sufferers and their families and the wider society.
A point that I am struggling to understand is how this bill stands apart from laws that already allow for the destruction of human embryos. The destruction of embryos is the inevitable consequence of assisted reproductive technology in which many embryos are created to increase the chances of pregnancy.
But at this point it is worth looking at what the bill is and what it is not. In public debate on this issue, I am concerned that the facts are often lost and at times the language becomes twisted.
This bill will enable scientists to undertake somatic cell nuclear transfer and parthenogenesis for research purposes. Stem cell research is important for studying normal and abnormal development of cells for disease modelling and for drug screening. It is important for developing cell therapies for treatment of infertility and debilitating diseases.
No human trials have taken place, although there have been animal trials. I note that one potential by-product of the process in the long term could be the reduction of experimentation on animals. Embryonic stem cells have the advantage that they are more pluripotent than adult stem cells. They can generate a range of cells, including blood, muscle, nerve and so forth. Adult stem cells are restricted to making cells similar to themselves. For example, bone marrow stem cells can make more bone marrow cells very efficiently, but those cells cannot be used for other purposes such as brain or heart cells. Further, there is no proven therapeutic benefit from trying to use them in that way. But they are useful when treating lymphoma or leukaemia when the need is to regenerate a patient’s bone marrow tissue.
So embryonic stem cells currently hold more promise because they are totipotent or pluripotent and can give rise to many different types of cells, and this gives them the
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