Michael Cook: Cell ethics down the river for a song
Cell ethics down the river for a song
by Michael Cook
first published in The Australian, 24 September 2001
VICTORIAN MP Kevin Andrews didn't have the numbers to get his federal parliamentary committee to recommend a ban on using surplus in-vitro fertilisation embryos for research. The six-four split means the decision has been handballed to parliament. But the report has his fingerprints all over it.
If its recommendations are accepted, it will save Australia from the unregulated, cash-and-carry environment in which scientists operate in the US. Although George W. Bush has limited research on embryo stem cells to 64 colonies of cells, this affects only government funding. So long as research is done with private money, researchers can do anything they want with embryos. A private institute in Virginia recently announced it had created embryos for research purposes only, using eggs purchased from volunteers.
The Andrews report contains much good sense. It recommends that reproductive cloning – a possibility that revolts nearly everyone – be banned. Scientists such as Italian Severino Antinori would face jail if they dared to create human clones here.
The committee also says embryos should not be deliberately created – and destroyed – to further scientific research. It recommends a three-year moratorium on creating cloned embryos.
Discussion of cloning is bedevilled by slippery definitions and clouded by scientific terminology that most laypeople find bewildering. So the conceptual clarity in the committee's report is refreshing. It scraps the oxymoronic term therapeutic cloning – which is hardly therapeutic for the dismembered embryo. Its definition of the embryo encompasses naturally conceived embryos, IVF embryos, cloned embryos and even embryos produced with non-human genetic material. In the eyes of the committee, the origin of the embryo does not determine its moral status.
Where the handiwork of chairman Andrews is most evident is the report's attempt to focus the coming debate where it belongs: squarely on the embryo's humanity.
Although the 10-member committee agreed on the need for a tight regulatory framework if research on embryo stem cells is approved by parliament, it was on this issue that they parted ways. "The specific issue . . . becomes whether it is permissible to use and/or destroy human embryos in order to conduct the research and gain the benefits," it states.
The potential rewards are a goldmine comparable to the discovery of antibiotics, say some scientists: cures for cancer, heart disease, Parkinson's disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's . . . Such claims ought to be greeted with scepticism – what do you expect goldmining companies to say? Benefits will undoubtedly flow from stem cell research. But what kind of stem cells?
Until now, those of us uneasy about the future of embryo stem cell research, because it necessarily involves destruction of embryos, have promoted the use of adult stem cells as a morally less problematic way to obtain the same benefits. These can be taken from placenta, blood, brain or muscle cells without killing anyone. Industry thinks research on adult stem cells is more promising.
But submissions to the Andrews committee show many scientists will not accept adult stem cells as a viable alternative, no matter how practical or promising they may be. They see the secrets of the infinite malleability of stem cells extracted from embryos as a kind of Holy Grail. One scientist told the committee that misgivings about using embryos were just fetishism about cells. Others argued that in view of their therapeutic potential, it was immoral even to restrict their research.
In the US, like-minded scientists have pressured Bush to relax his guidelines. Earlier this month, the National Academy of Sciences gave him a respectful raspberry. It brushed aside ethical qualms to recommend what amounted to unrestricted, publicly funded research on embryos.
The key issue in deciding whether the 65,000 spare embryos in the fridges of Australian IVF clinics should be available for research, is whether it is ethical to dismember and destroy one human being in the hope of making another one healthy. For it is a human being, even if it appears to be a mere speck of tissue.
It is a pity Andrews was unable to steer his committee towards a ban on stem cell research that destroys unwanted embryos. But at least the air has been cleared for debate. Writing the regulations governing research must not be left to scientists, but to all stakeholders. Would you leave the drafting of the Companies Act up to Alan Bond and Christopher Skase?
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