Australasian Bioethics Information
Questions over death of Nancy Crick
EUTHANASIA/ Mercy killing now legal in Belgium
SEX SELECTION / 100 couples in Australia have chosen child's sex
BUSINESS / Scientist tips stem cell bonanza
EMBRYO STEM CELLS/ Mice cured of diabetes
PATENTS / First patent on human cloning granted
HUMAN CLONING / Would-be clonees push debate in US
EUTHANASIA / Questions over death of Nancy Crick
Nancy Crick, the Queensland grandmother who was the protégée of euthanasia activist Dr Philip Nitschke, died on Thursday after drinking poison. The 69-year-old had been diagnosed with bowel cancer three years ago. Despite some relief from palliative care, she weighed only 27 kg and complained that she suffered unbearable pain and discomfort.
However, to the astonishment of her family, the coroner has said that a post-mortem showed no signs of active bowel cancer. Although the media had consistently described her as suffering from bowel cancer, Dr Nitschke knew this to be false. "It didn't seem a point to go into at the time," he commented.
Mrs Crick's death marks the beginning of mass civil disobedience to introduce euthanasia laws, according to Dr Nitschke. Dr Nitschke has announced that another three of his patients are considering taking their own lives. Dr Nitschke's strategy seems to be to make current laws unenforceable and ridiculous. Mrs Crick passed away surrounded by 21 deathbed companions who could all be deemed to have assisted her suicide and prosecuted.
In a posthumous videotape, Mrs Crick said someone had sent her lethal poison after she had requested it on her internet site. She insisted that she was "not depressed or unstable or mad".
The case had received international publicity, which was boosted by a sophisticated website set up by Exit Australia to record Mrs Crick's daily musings. Her demise has rekindled the smouldering debate over euthanasia. Greens Senator Bob Brown of Tasmania has said that he will introduce a bill in Federal Parliament to reinstate the powers of the Northern Territory and the ACT to legalise euthanasia.RETURN TO TOP
EUTHANASIA / Mercy killing now legal in Belgium
Euthanasia will soon be legal in Belgium. A bill passed last week is expected to come into effect this summer, when Belgium will join neighbouring Netherlands as the only countries where euthanasia is legal. The legislation covers not only the final stages of terminal illnesses, but also incurable psychological illnesses and other incurable, but not terminal conditions. The opposition Christian Democrats have said that they may challenge the law in the European Court of Human Rights. ~ BBC News, May 16RETURN TO TOP
SEX SELECTION / 100 couples in Australia have chosen child's sex
A feature in The Australian Weekend Magazine claims that about 100 couples in Australia have used IVF to select the sex of their child. Dr Robert Jansen, of Sydney IVF, says that 90% of couples seeking sex selection want to "round out" their families and that he does not assist clients who have "bizarre" reasons. He says that it is unlikely that the procedure will upset the gender balance in Australia, as the procedure is intrusive and expensive.
Experience in the US, Australia and Japan shows that couples using sex selection tend to want a girl by about a 60-40 majority. Sex selection in banned in Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria, but is permitted for medical reasons in the last two. The other Australian states and territories do not regulate the practice. ~ The Australian Weekend Magazine, May 18-19RETURN TO TOP
BUSINESS / Scientist tips stem cell bonanza
Australia ought to capitalise on its world-leading position in stem cell research, according to Professor Peter Rathjen, of Adelaide University. The potential market for medical advances is enormous -- about US$40 billion for treating stroke victims alone. Although Australia normally does about 2.5% of world scientific research, in stem cell research it is responsible for about 25%, he says. "You are talking about a whole paradigm shift in the way that medicine is done," explained Professor Rathjen, whose department works with the Australian stem cell research company BresaGen. ~ Mercury, May 23; Sydney Morning Herald, May 22RETURN TO TOP
EMBRYO STEM CELLS / Mice cured of diabetes
Diabetic mice have been cured in the US after injections of pancreatic cells derived from embryo stem cells, said the CEO of Melbourne-based ES Cell International, Robert Klupacs, at the opening of his company's new research centre. However, he said, "curing mice is not curing humans. There's a long way to go." He predicts that biotech products for curing diabetes will be on the market by the year 2009. Clinical trials should begin in about three years. Newspaper accounts did not include references for the research. ~ Mercury, May 25RETURN TO TOP
PATENTS / First patent on human cloning granted
The University of Missouri has been granted the first patent on human cloning. Patent number 6,211,429 for cloning mammals can also be used to clone human beings. Although the US Patent Office says that it does not grant patents on cloning humans, lawyers said that this patent had been granted only for a method of cloning humans, not for humans clones themselves. Lawyers are mulling over the implications of the patent. One opinion was that the University of Missouri could prevent people created in other countries with its patented process from entering the United States. The response of Kansas Senator Sam Brownback was to declare that he would introduce legislation to prohibit all patents on human embryos and "chimeras" (combinations of human and animal embryos). ~ kaisernetwork.org, May 17
HUMAN CLONING / Would-be clonees push debate in US
"A small but serious cadre of would-be clonees" are arguing that they have a right to be cloned, the Washington Post reports. The Post interviewed three ordinary people "who claim nothing less than a democratic right to be pioneers on the biomedical frontier".
Liz Catalan, of Miami, is infertile and has "an extraordinary craving to be cloned". "If the only way a person can have a child of their own is to do this, and if they are willing to take a chance, then they should be able to," she says.
Another woman, Kathy Gordon, of Montana, wants to clone her dead daughter. She claims that her freedom to reproduce is at least as compelling as a clone's right to be unique. A third potential clonee, Jonathan Colvin, of Vancouver, suffers from the genetic disease cystic fibrosis. He would like to create a new and improved copy of himself, free of the disease.
According to the Post, several prominent bioethicists say that there is no coherent reason for forbidding cloning. University of Alabama philosopher Gregory Pence says that "the essential moral question is whether human cloning is intrinsically wrong. But how can a new way of creating a family be intrinsically wrong?" Brown University Dan Brock says that having the same genome as another person does not pose a threat to human uniqueness. The full individuality of a person "is determined by much more than the person's genome".
The safety considerations which have featured prominently in debates about human cloning are weak arguments, according to Pence. "If cloning one day becomes safer than sexual reproduction, will cloning then be the only [legal] way to have children?" ~ Washington Post, May 12RETURN TO TOP
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