INHUMAN ETHICS, UNNECESSARY SCIENCE, AND NOW UNJUST LAW.

MEDIA RELEASE – Thursday 7th December 2006

CLONING VOTE: CONSCIENCE CRUSHED BY ‘CON SCIENCE’

“This tragic and shameful vote has been a victory for ‘con science’ over conscience”, said Dr David van Gend, National Director of Australians for Ethical Stem Cell Research.

“The issue of conscience was clearly defended by 62 MPs. They refused on principle, like the entire Parliament in 2002, to cross the line of creating living human embryos solely for research.

“But ‘con science’ was too powerful for the other 82 MPs. Like superstitious peasants they believed the witchdoctors who held out hope of miracle cures from cloning. The credulity of these MPs was touching and pitiful – any disease suffered by any relative became reason enough for them to declare they ‘would not stand in the way of a cure’.

“The moral damage to society has now been done by approving a laboratory subclass of human young, created only for exploitation. But now that we have cut ourselves loose from the essential ethical principle – that no human life can be exploited for the benefit of other human lives – there is no way to get a grip on the slippery slope to further desecrations.

“We put it on the record now: with the next review in 4 years time, scientists will again be asking to create animal-human hybrid embryos, and will be asking to grow cloned embryos a little longer so they can extract more useful mature tissues. Eventually we will be taking seriously the request of Melbourne Professor Julian Savulescu to grow cloned fetuses in order to obtain their organs for transplant.

“For all those misguided MPs who abandoned ethical principle in favour of fatuous dreams of cures from cloning, who have agreed to let aborted baby girls be made the ‘mother’ of embryos, on what rock of ethical principle will you resist these further violations of our humanity? You have none. If these human young are officially, in your eyes, mere meat for the consumption of science, then why not use more mature meat?

“This vote for cloning was not a vote for hope – the only real hope is being provided by the entirely ethical field of adult stem cell science. This was a vote for hype and inhumanity – for an immoral and unnecessary science that will create new lives solely for exploitation." ENDS.

Last appeal for conscience over con science

As we prepare for the final debate on the cloning Bill, we hope that some MPs will have read the full ‘case against cloning’ which we sent to them in two stages last week, and which can be viewed on the website at:
http://www.cloning.org.au/Documents/final%20cloning%20appeal.pdf

We can still have some (desperate) hope that our MPs will focus clearly on the ethical issue at stake, and that their conscience will be able to crawl out from under the heap of con science that shonky scientists and moronic media have dumped on them.

As I told one journalist today:

"We think the vote will not be as close as in the Senate, but that if MPs get focussed on the single ethical issue at stake - whether it is morally permissible to create new human embryos solely for research - then anything can happen. If they remained fooled by Dr Mal Washer's nonsense statements that cloning does not create an embryo (since there is no sperm involved - even though Dolly was created without sperm!) then of course they will support the Bill.

"And this inhuman Bill based on misguided science will be passed - a Bill so ugly that it allows for the creation of embryos from aborted baby girls. And science, which should serve our humanity, will have made us all less human."

IT'S OFFICIAL: MAJORITY DON'T SUPPORT CLONING EMBRYOS FOR RESEARCH

Alan Baker, President of the Family Council of Queensland, has done a masterful and timely job of clarifying public opinion on cloning. And, as expected, most Australians - being the decent coots we know ourselves to be - oppose cloning embryos for research. Of course, if they are asked sly misleading questions that hide the ethical issue of creating a human embryo solely for research, then the outcome is different. But if the question is unambiguous, the answer is unambiguously 'no thank you'.

So our Representatives can vote against cloning knowing they are representing not only what is ethically right, but what is democratically desired.

We thank Alan Baker for permission to post the letter the FCQ sent today to all Federal MPs.


MOST AUSTRALIANS AGAINST HUMAN CLONING
An analysis of the opinion polls

28 November, 2006

Dear Member of the House of Representatives

While you no doubt will vote on the Patterson Bill to legalise human cloning according to your conscience, I write to inform you that the majority of Australians are opposed to the cloning of human embryos as a source of stem cells.

The most recent valid research into public attitudes to human cloning was carried out by Sexton Marketing Group for the Southern Cross Bioethics Institute in January 2006 through a national telephone poll of 1200 people. 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.

The question asked was: “Do you support or oppose the cloning of human embryos as a source of stem cells?” When it was clarified with respondents in a subsequent question that these embryos would be destroyed in the process of obtaining stem cells from them, opposition to this increased to 55% (43% of respondents were not previously aware of this fact).

This research was reported in an article in The Age by Michelle Grattan on August 22, 2006. See http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/cloning-can-affect-votes-mps-told/2006/08/21/1156012474759.html

Earlier independent research conducted by Swinburne University using focus groups
(see www.swinburne.edu.au/sbs/ajets/journal/V2N2/pdf/V2N2-2-Critchley.pdf ) 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 independent research was published in 2004, it was ignored by the Lockhart Committee. Follow-up research conducted this year by Swinburne University, which is yet to be published, shows that only 31.5% of Australians are comfortable with “therapeutic cloning”.

In contrast, much has been made of the Morgan poll published on 21 June 2006, which claimed that 80% of Australians supported human cloning for embryonic stem cells. In fact, this Morgan poll is invalid, because it gave respondents false and misleading information. Respondents were told:

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 favor or oppose embryonic stem cell research?
See www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2006/4036/

The fact is that no scientist anywhere in the world has yet made a cloned human embryo, let alone taken embryonic stem cells from one. The Morgan Poll also gave a misleading description of cloning, a word which the poll carefully avoided using.

Many respondents would not have understood from the description in the Morgan poll that this process would still create a living human embryo (another word which the poll carefully avoided using) which could, if implanted in a woman’s womb, be born as a baby, but would instead be destroyed by the extraction of its stem cells.

Similarly, the AC Nielsen poll which was published in its National Issues Report on 10 September, 2006 is also invalid because of the inaccurate and misleading wording of the question. This poll found that 62% of Australians supported “the cloning of stem cells for medical research.” Again, no mention that what would be produced in the cloning process would be a human embryo which would be destroyed for its stem cells. At least AC Nielsen was professional enough to acknowledge in an endnote that “these findings should be interpreted with some caution as this is a complex issue. Previous studies have found that stem cell questions are particularly sensitive to question wording.”

Not surprisingly, the Crosby Textor poll commissioned by Research Australia which was released on 23 November 2006 (see www.researchaustralia.org ) is also invalid because it gave respondents inaccurate and misleading information. Respondents were told that “therapeutic cloning… involves creating a stem cell from a patient’s cell but does not involve the union of an egg and sperm.” Again, the fact that a living human embryo would be created and then destroyed in the process was carefully concealed. Respondents were further reassured “that the use of SCNT to clone a human will continue to be explicitly prohibited”, as if the embryo to be created by cloning was something other than human. Little wonder the poll found that 58% of Australians support “therapeutic cloning of nuclear transfer embryos for health and medical research.”

Claims being made by the cloning lobby that the community strongly supports the legalisation of human cloning are false. The opposite is in fact the case. Opinion polls are only as good as the questions that are asked, assuming the methodology is sound. The validity of opinion polls must be judged by the accuracy of the information given to respondents and the objective wording of the questions.

Cloning is wrong, because it is immoral to create human life with its destruction intended. It is also unnecessary, as ethically obtained adult stem cells will produce the treatments and cures we all want. Do not be conned by the cloning lobby, as were 34 of your Senate colleagues, into believing that rejecting human cloning will deprive the sick of hope.

And do not be conned into thinking that a cloned human embryo is somehow not human life just because sperm was not used in the process. (As Senator Alan Eggleston, who is a GP and obstetrician, explained in the Senate debate, sperm is simply a method of transporting DNA into an egg, just like a glass pipette in an IVF lab.)

I trust that you will follow your conscience and vote against the legalisation of human cloning, which was unanimously rejected for very good reason by Federal Parliament just four years ago. You can do so confident that the Australian people would support you in this.

Kind regards


ALAN BAKER
President, Family Council of Queensland
PO Box 2020, Mansfield BC 4122 Phone 0412 265 157
info@familyexpo.net

TUCH’S SEAWEED TRICK: PADDED CELLS FOR STEM CELLS

Professor Bernie Tuch has given us two belly laughs in a single week. First there was his pricelessly incoherent commment celebrating the cloning victory in the Senate - that "this is as significant as the assassination of John F. Kennedy". And now he has given us an after-dinner conjuring show, doing old tricks with seaweed.

His paper, published today to headlines about 'Scientists overcome immune rejection and tumour problems with stem cells', is nothing of the sort. He uses decades-old technology of alginate packaging of cells for reducing immune response, bundles up a few ESCs - which are then rendered irrelevant for any form of tissue therapy, being unable to make contact with any tissue and says, "see, they don't form tumours!"

In fact, his paper gives us no such reassurance, and only reminds us what sleight of hand the cloning lobby has to use to make the public think this fatal flaw in ESC science can be 'got over'. Remember Prof Trounson in 2002 reassuring us that they were just about to 'get over' the immune rejection problem that made ESCs so obviously unusable in cell transplant therapy?

Whatever the public needs to hear, be sure they will be told by the new breed of scientist-lobbyist.

This paper says nothing about embryonic stem cells (ESCs) except what we already know - that these little troublemakers are so dangerous the only option is to lock them up.

Confined to their seaweed padded-cell, the ESCs in Tuch's study still tried to break out as teratoma tumours – that is, they still proliferated into an uncontrolled range of different cell types – but were contained, as Tuch writes, “by limiting the amount of space available for the cells to grow.”

Entirely appropriate, this high-security solitary confinement, for criminal cells so notorious for fatal tumour formation that last month’s study on rat Parkinson’s found that 4 in every 5 rats treated with ESCs formed teratomas.

Tuch’s paper – entirely irrelevant to the question of cloning human embryos - does show one definite finding: that ESCs formed tumours in all the mice they were put in, unless they were wrapped up in seaweed and kept away from the body tissues. So what’s new?

Gee wizz, what a useful technique: restrict ESCs to a little seaweed package to show they can remain entirely useless for long periods of time. And then celebrate the fact that they don't kill the patients.

Or maybe they will anyway, after the seaweed goes soggy and breaks up: 20% of the seaweed capsules using mouse ESCs ruptured and let their dangerous felons loose again.

Tuch's paper celebreates the fact that he can keep ESCs safely locked away in a seaweed strait-jacket, thereby barring them from the only useful work a stem cell should do - getting into and repairing damaged tissue. And all because ESCs can not, and intrinsically never will be able to do such work. Only adult stem cells, as Prof Sherly explained on his recent visit, have the capacity to take up residence in tissues and generate new cells while retaining their own identity. ESCs can only proliferate wildly - unless you first turn them into adult stem cells!

What a shonky science this is, ESCs and cloning; how second rate in every possible way to adult stem cells, which do not form tumours and which are now safely used in many conditions – including direct tissue repair of heart muscle, bone, cornea etc etc. (Journal article refs available).

Tuch's lightweight article does not herald 'The End of the Tumour Problem with ESCs'. It only confirms the intractable nature of that problem. It also confirms the puppy-like enthusiasm of the media for any bone, even with no scrap of meaningful meat on it, thrown to them by the progressive science lobby.

Above all, it confirms by contrast how safe and exciting the ethical alternative is to this futile tinkering with embryos.

Given that “the purposes of cloning can be achieved using adult stem cells” (as our leading adult stem cell researcher, Prof Alan Mackay-Sim, told the Senate hearing), how absurd it is to pursue wacky schemes like trapping ESCs in seaweed to limit their harm, when we could simply use adult stem cells safely and directly from our own tissues!

Senate succumbs to 'con science'

The Senate vote for cloning is a victory for organised lying.

Brutal legislation, that permits the creation of human young as mere raw material for research, has been achieved by systematic scientific deception.

And even on the day of the vote, science lobbyists were deceiving the public by denying the most brutal aspect of this Bill – that it lets aborted baby girls be used as ‘mothers’ of cloned embryos (see the last Blog).

Some scientists have shown they are prepared to do ‘whatever it takes’ to get liberal legislation on cloning:

- Fairy tales about cloning being used to treat Alzheimer’s or diabetes in humans – when in truth all it does in animals is cause tumours and genetic damage.

- Continual denigration of the magnificent and ethical field of adult stem-cell science, in reality so superior to cloning for both research and treatment.

- Hiding from the public the fact that embryonic stem cells remain entirely unusable in humans, due to tumour formation, while adult stem cells are being safely used in over 1200 human trials.

- Playing word games to pretend that cloning just creates ‘cells’, when in fact it creates an entire living human embryo like any other, that could (if permitted) be born as a baby.

We have witnessed the hubris of scientists who do not want anybody, even the Parliament, telling them what they can and cannot research. As one senior scientist put it to me, ‘If you let them limit us on cloning, where will it stop?’

We have witnessed the shameful behaviour of scientists who – as another senior scientist confided - feel so starved of funding for research that they will compromise their professional integrity for a big new bucket of public money.

We have witnessed the timidity of scientists who know that their colleagues are falsifying the science for PR reasons, who will admit that privately but will not speak up for fear of rocking the scientific boat.

In contrast, we have seen honourable scientists like Prof TJ Martin, Prof Alan Mackay-Sim and Prof James Sherley challenging their colleagues to tell the scientific truth and maintain ethical standards for human research. Their efforts, in the face of organised lying by their colleagues, has been an inspiration.

There must be no further misplaced deference to lofty Professors and other snake-oil salesmen who distort both the science and the ethics of cloning in order to progress their radical agenda.

Our MPs must be more ruthlessly skeptical of these scientific lobbyists, more diligent in uncovering the true motives for cloning, more aware of the solid-gold science of adult stem cells, if they are not to be victims of ‘con science’ like their 34 upper house colleagues.

SWEET IDEA, SENATOR: MAKE AN ABORTED BABY GIRL THE 'MOTHER' OF AN EMBRYO WHICH WILL THEN BE DESTROYED IN RESEARCH...

So few people are aware of the actual provisions of Senator Patterson’s cloning Bill now before Federal Parliament, and in only a few days it might become a done deal.

Judging from the response to our recent nationwide newspaper ad, including the response from the Sydney ABC Radio drive host after I explained the Bill to her, at least one of the most repulsive provisions is going to come back to bite the framers of this legislation.

During the Senate inquiry into our laws banning cloning, I asked Senator Patterson what the public would think of her proposal to let an aborted baby girl be used as the ‘mother’ of a cloned embryo which will then be destroyed in research.

She did not answer, but conferred closely with Senator Moore, who first tried to call my bluff – asking for me to show just exactly where such a provision was made in the Bill. Then, when I started to quote chapter and verse she cut across me to say she would take that on notice (apparently to stop me putting the facts on Hansard).

The exchange, for the record, went thusly – and I admit to having enjoyed being asked the opening question… Nothing I like more than a limp question from a moral-equivalence post-modernist type who feels that if there are ‘alternative’ views then they must all be considered to be of equal moral worth!

Senator MOORE— Dr van Gend, before my time runs out, which is imminent, I want to get on the record, from your position, whether you accept that there are genuinely alternative views on the arguments you have put forward and whether the debate has been open.

Dr van Gend—I think there are obviously alternative views. I quoted Professor Savulescu, who is professor of ethics at Oxford. He is a Melbourne man. He wants to create cloned embryos, grow them to foetuses and cull them for their organs to solve the transplant issue. He is a very serious man and he holds a very genuine view—and I hate it. I think on this we agree that there will be views held by people which we find horrendous, and that is one of them. I find it horrendous that in Senator Patterson’s bill she is proposing that an aborted baby girl can be used to become the mother of a cloned embryo which will then be destroyed in research. You ask the public what they think of that and see if there is ‘deep and widely held opposition’, to quote the Lockhart committee, to the proposal of using precursor cells from an aborted foetus in order to generate a cloned embryo that can be used in research. See what comes of that.

Senator MOORE—I give up. Can you actually show me in the draft bill and the explanatory memorandum where that is allowed. I would like to see where in the bill the statement you just made is proposed. I put that to you on notice.

Dr van Gend—I can tell you now. On page 3 of 30 of the first section of the explanatory memorandum it says:
create human embryos using precursor cells from a human embryo or a human fetus, and use such embryos ...
So it is talking about using the precursor cells from a human foetus to create a cloned embryo— that is the ovarian precursor for a little egg out of an aborted baby girl. That is what a precursor cell is defined as in the current act. You ask the public what they think about creating clones from aborted baby girls which will then be destroyed in research. It will fail the Lockhart test.

Senator MOORE—I will go back and have a look.
Tuesday, 24 October 2006 Senate CA 110 COMMUNITY AFFAIRS

Indeed, another good look – and no doubt this foulest of the many filthy provisions in the Patterson Bill will look like a political liability now that it has been exposed, and will be traded away in the amendments, as the pro-cloning Senators try to cobble together a slim majority next week.

Still, let it be on the record for now that Senater Patterson’s Bill does propose such vileness, such a morally degraded concept as would once have disqualified the proposer from public office in a decent society.

And let it be on the record that all her protestations about this Bill NOT allowing the creation of sperm-egg embryos are exposed as false. For some superstitious reason, Senator Patterson and the Lockhart committee consider the sperm-egg embryo to be quite different in moral status from an SCNT embryo - even though, in themselves, they are all embryos trying to grow into babies. Yet here we have an admission from both Patterson and Lockhart (see below) that they did have a hidden provision in their Bill for creation of sperm-egg embryos – using the ova from the aborted baby.

This is plain deceitful: making these stern claims about the wrongness of creating sperm-egg embryos, then sneaking in this means of creating sperm-egg embryos, under the cloak of jargon like ‘precursor cells’.

In case there is any doubt as to the meaning and intent of this provision – of creating and using human embryos from precursor cells from a fetus – remember that ‘precursor cells’ are explained in the current Act as being the immature sperm or egg cells in the primitive gonads of the fetus.

And in response to questions on notice from Senator Barnett, Loane Skene for the Lockhart Committee has admitted that they did ‘envisage’ the use of eggs from aborted baby girls for making embryos. Further:

1. That their recommendation will allow eggs from aborted baby girls to be used either for cloning or for fertilisation by sperm from an adult male.

2. That they gave no particular consideration to community opinion on this particular issue.

3. That to avoid the fact that fetal eggs create an sperm-egg embryo, which they claim to ban, they simply chose to think of an embryo made using fetal precursor cells as being 'more like' an "SCNT embryo" than an "egg-sperm" embryo made for IVF.

Wishful thinking as a way of living with duplicity. And we are meant to respect this sneaky mob?

Let’s hope our Senators are skeptical enough of the slippery ethics of the Lockhart Committee and the shameless hype of certain scientists to retain the ban on such inhumanities as this -making an aborted baby girl the dead ‘mother’ of embryos created solely for destruction.

What are we becoming? Have we entirely lost the moral sanity that makes us say 'No! Enough!'

The week ahead will tell.

National Newspaper Ad: DOCTORS DIG DEEP TO INFORM PUBLIC ON CLONING

NEWS For immediate release THURSDAY, 2nd NOVEMBER

NATIONAL ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN ON CLONING:
DOCTORS DIG DEEP TO INFORM PUBLIC

Doctors have spearheaded a $120,000-plus national advertising campaign to argue the ethical and scientific case against the legalisation of human cloning.

A full page color ad in The Australian and tabloid-size ads in newspapers in every state capital will be rolled out from today, leading up to the Senate conscience vote on cloning next week.
See http://www.makeastand.org.au/dnh_broadsheet.jpg 673KB http://www.makeastand.org.au/dnh_tabloid.jpg 407 KB

The ad, authorised by Dr David van Gend of Do No Harm! Australians for Ethical Stem Cell Research, has been supported by Doctors Against Cloning, a group of more than 200 doctors formed recently to express opposition to cloning on ethical and scientific grounds.

Dr Megan Best, national convenor of Doctors Against Cloning, said: “We wrote last month to all Senators and MPs stating that only ethical and effective stem cell research should be supported. This advertisement explains why cloning is unethical in humans and ineffective even in animals, and reminds the public that adult stem cell research is superior both ethically and scientifically. Therefore we are very pleased to support the ad.”

Dr van Gend said: “The public has no idea of the inhuman provisions of the Patterson Bill - that it will allow the creation of human embryos as mere laboratory material, decreeing that they must be killed at 14 days of age; that it will allow the creation of animal-human hybrid embryos using eggs of a pig or rabbit; and even allow an aborted baby girl to become the ‘mother’ of an embryo which will then be destroyed in research.

“This advertising initiative, funded by doctors and concerned mums and dads across Australia, will help alert the public and their representatives to the unethical proposals of the Patterson ‘clone and kill’ Bill,” Dr van Gend said.

“Cloning is wrong in humans, unproven in animals in terms of safety and effectiveness and unnecessary.

“Australia should support stem cell science that serves our humanity, not this misguided science that violates our humanity,” Dr van Gend concluded.

The ad argues that cloning is wrong, because cloning creates a human embryo like any other embryo, and it is wrong to create human embryos solely for research.

The ad argues that cloning is unnecessary, because “we will still get the great benefits of stem cell science” using adult stem cells, which have been proven to be both safe and effective in humans.

It warns of the “future abuses” that will only be made possible if Australia perfects the technique of cloning, quoting Melbourne Professor Julian Savulescu’s demand to develop cloned embryos to the fetal stage to obtain organs for transplantation, and Melbourne academic Daniel Elsner’s defence of cloning right through to birth.

The ad links to the resource website of Do No Harm (www.cloning.org.au) and to a new campaign website (www.makeastand.org.au) where the public can email their Senators and Federal MPs to ask them “to reject cloning, but support the magnificent field of adult stem cell science.”

CONTACTS NATIONAL AND STATE

NATIONAL: Dr David van Gend, 0417 007066; 07 46329377; vangend@machousemedical.com.au
National Director Do No Harm! Australians for Ethical Stem Cell Research www.cloning.org.au

NATIONAL AND NSW: Dr Megan Best, 0434 823678
National Convenor, Doctors Against Cloning

VIC: Dr Eloise Piercy, 0438 363509
QLD: Alan Baker, 0412 265157
WA: Richard Egan, 0416 148008
SA: Damien Wyld, 0402 751889
TAS: Pat Gartlan 03 6223 1818

NEWSPAPER PUBLICATION DAYS

THURSDAY 2nd November:
The Australian
The Age
The Sydney Morning Herald
The Courier-Mail
FRIDAY 3rd November
The West Australian
SATURDAY 4th November
The Advertiser (Adelaide)
SUNDAY 5th November
The Sunday Tasmanian

"YES!" SAYS THE SENATE REPORT - "IT'S A LIVING HUMAN EMBRYO!"

No, your Blogger didn’t kick the bucket, he only turned a little pail... Thanks to Richard and Rita for filling in over the last fortnight.

Back in time to celebrate a small but significant victory for truth, both scientific and moral, over the ‘great lie at the heart of the cloning debate’ (see earlier Blog).

The cloning lobby is in ignominious retreat from the sneaky little lie that cloning ‘does not create a human embryo’ – the lie that was proposed last year by the International Society for Stem Cell Research, faithfully parroted by certain key scientists, MPs and journalists, and now buried in a hastily dug grave by the Senate cloning inquiry.

Quelle joie, to read in the majority report of the Senate Committee – the bad guys – the admission that the embryo made by cloning would indeed be just the same as an IVF embryo, and no word other than ‘embryo’ is to be used:
3.13 The representatives of Do No Harm tabled at the hearing on Tuesday 25th November an Editorial from Nature which says ’Whether taken from a fertility clinic or made through cloning, a blastocyst embryo has the potential to become a full functional organism’.1 This is exactly what the Lockhart Committee addressed in ensuring that an embryo created by SCNT is encompassed by the definition of embryo.

There is nothing to be happy about in the rest of the majority report - mostly baseless scientific claims and dodgy ethical reasoning - but that one little paragraph of intellectual backdown is a triumph. A triumph for the numerous contributors to the Inquiry – through submissions and testimony - who relentlessly reinforced the truth that cloning creates a living human embryo, nothing less, and who have, to a great extent, defeated the Great Lie.

Now it appears the debate can take place with all Senators in agreement that the ‘entity’ made by cloning is a human embryo. Then they just have to decide the same question they debated in 2002: whether it is ‘morally permissible’, in Sen Patterson’s phrase, to create such embryos solely for research.

The actual opportunity to table the Nature Editorial was provided by an observation by Senator Fierravanti-Wells. She quoted the important admission by Prof Loane Skene earlier in the inquiry that the Lockhart Committee ‘did not shy away’ from calling the cloned embryo an embryo – even though they still, for unexplained reasons of pure prejudice, held it in ethical contempt:

Senator FIERRAVANTI-WELLS—Senator Webber made some comments about whether this SCNT entity was an embryo or not an embryo. I would like to take you back to what Professor Skene actually said at the hearing on Friday. She stated:
Other people have said to us that what we are talking about today, a somatic cell nuclear transfer embryo, is better not being called an embryo. We did not shy away from calling it an embryo because it is conceivable, as happened with Dolly the sheep, that if that entity were put into a woman, after a lot of care, it could in fact develop into a foetus. So we did call it an embryo. We still regarded it, as many other people did who made submissions to us, as having a different moral status from the embryos that are created in fertility programs.

In short, irrespective of the science, what Professor Skene is saying here is that it does come down to a moral issue. It does come down to the ethics of what this entity really is. We have heard a lot of evidence about the science on both sides. But this is not about adult stem cells versus embryonic stem cells; this is about whether the community is prepared to take that quantum leap, to take that ethical leap… and to go down the route of human cloning, to go down the route of a process that does lead to cloning.

Dr van Gend, I wanted to not only clarify the exchange that was happening but also hear a comment from yourself, and others who may have a comment, in relation to that.

Dr van Gend—This has always been at the heart of the debate. In 2002 the parliament said that you cannot create new embryos for research. There was a ethical roadblock set up on the path of those who want cloning and the only way around that roadblock was to pretend that in fact the cloned embryo is not an embryo.

This has been done by Professor Williamson, for instance, who says, ‘No, because there’s not an egg or a sperm, it’s not an embryo.’ It is an ‘intermediate cellular product’—that is what he said in the Sydney Morning Herald. Dolly the sheep had no sperm, and Dolly the sheep was a living creature. It is superstitious to pretend that because an embryo comes about via different means it is not an embryo when it looks, behaves and grows like an embryo.

I must say I was pleasantly surprised when Professor Skene made that comment because, as you know, she is ethical adviser to the International Society for Stem Cell Research, which is the world’s leading cloning lobby. …last year that very society decreed that we would not call it an embryo, we would call it a different word because it had emotional connotations. I will table this editorial in Nature magazine from July last year. The Nature journal condemned the International Society for Stem Cell Research in a very short editorial called ‘Playing the name game’. It said: Stem-cell biologists should not try to change the definition of the word ‘embryo’. In this very powerful, brief editorial…it said:
Whether taken from a fertility clinic or made through cloning, a blastocyst embryo has the potential to become a fully functional organism, and appearing to deny that fact will not fool diehard opponents of the research. If anything, it will simply open up scientists to the accusation that they are trying to distance themselves from difficult moral issues by changing the terms of the debate.

That was the obvious strategy of the cloning lobby: change the terms of the debate, say it is not an embryo. I believe that members of this committee will shed light amongst their Senate colleagues that there is no place for name games in our legislative assembly. Call things what they are: a blastocyst embryo, an IVF embryo, a cloning embryo are embryos which can become fully functional organisms.

From that basis of truth, we can then proceed to ask: ‘Will we now do what we did not do in 2002? Will we now agree to create living human embryos solely for their destruction, with the sole intention of exploiting them for research?’ And if we will do that, why? What has changed since Senator Patterson’s magnificent statement of conviction in 2002 when she said: I believe strongly that it is wrong to create human embryos solely for research.

How can anything have changed so dramatically in four years, when the science has not changed? Apart from the Hwang fraud and a dubious paper from Newcastle that has never been confirmed, effectively there has been no demonstrated case of human cloning since 2002. There are embryonic stem cell research papers by the thousands but they go nowhere, because you cannot use them on humans. Nothing has changed in the public attitudes if you look at valid surveys—Swinburne and Sexton Marketing rather than phone polls by biotech groups. And nothing has changed in the ethical position, and I hope Mr Campbell will elaborate on this, that it is simply a violation of human rights to create living human entities, living human members of this species, to destroy them.
CA 112 Senate Tuesday, 24 October 2006 COMMUNITY AFFAIRS

Mr Campbell certainly did elaborate, and one of the most useful insights on the status of the embryo came from Ray, when he explained:

Mr Campbell— The thing about a cloned embryo is that, genetically, it has the human genome. Under the microscope, it looks like a human embryo. Analysed—how is it acting?—it is acting like a human embryo. And you know what? If it was not acting like a human embryo, the scientists would not be interested in it. They need a human embryo that will grow to the blastocyst stage, as a human embryo, to harvest human embryonic stem cells. So it is behaving like a human.

And we know—hypothetically, because it has not been done, but given that it has been done in animals we know—that, placed in a proper environment, the same as an embryo produced by human egg and sperm union, potentially it will grow to be a full human being. That to me seems to be just basic philosophy and science coming together in an appropriate way. That is how we define things: we look at how they behave.
CA 112 Senate Tuesday, 24 October 2006

Mind you, there is a lot of clear teaching still required to overcome the muddle that has been slung around the House by the likes of Mal Washer and Ian MacFarlane. Take, for example, the sincere efforts of Senator Webber to wipe the mud from her eyes, and see that an embryo is an embryo is an embryo…

Senator WEBBER—Can you point out to me where we are saying that we will create human embryos—new egg-sperm embryos—solely for research?

Dr van Gend— …As I explained in my opening remarks, an embryo is an embryo whether it is created by egg and sperm or whether it is created by somatic cell nuclear transfer or whether it is created by parthenogenesis as defined in our existing act, in section 7 in the definitions in the existing Prohibition of Human Cloning Act.

Senator WEBBER—So you are therefore saying to me that an egg-sperm embryo has the same status as an egg with another cell put into it that is not a sperm?

Dr van Gend—They are the same entity. If I hold one in each hand and show them to you or to some expert, you cannot tell which embryo was created by IVF sperm and egg and which embryo was created by somatic cell nuclear transfer. It looks like an embryo. It behaves like an embryo; if you put it in Dolly’s mother, it will grow to a lamb. If it looks like one and acts like one it probably is one.

Senator WEBBER—So therefore if we go down the parthenogenesis route where it is just an egg that it stimulated to the eight-cell development without anything else in it, are you saying that that is an embryo?

Dr van Gend—It is by your definition in the current act a human entity that is developing as an embryo.

Senator WEBBER—It is an egg.

Dr van Gend—It is an embryo. An egg is a cell in a female body that contains half our genetic material. It is a piece of us. An embryo is a self-contained, self-directed living entity that controls its own future. Given the right environment, as the Lockhart review admitted, the cloned embryo can develop as a normal embryo to the foetal and live birth stage. There is no dispute on that. It has not been tried yet [in humans] but it has happened in animals: Dolly the sheep, Matilda the lamb, Snuppy the puppy and so on. The process proposed by this legislation is exactly the same as what created Dolly and the other animals. Therefore you are dealing with a human entity which looks and behaves like an embryo - therefore, it is an embryo. …

Senator WEBBER—So, scientifically, an egg that is stimulated on its own, an egg with another cell implanted in it and an egg with a sperm implanted in it all look exactly the same and I cannot tell the difference at 14 days?

Dr van Gend—Correct. And if you put it in the body of a sheep, it would be born as Dolly the lamb.
CA 103 Senate Tuesday, 24 October 2006 COMMUNITY AFFAIRS

For those who want to read the Senate Committee transcripts, this is the link; there are great moments from scientists like Prof Jack Martin, Alan Mackay-Sim and James Sherley, from moral philosophers like Nick Tonti-Fillipini, Anthony Fisher and Ray Campbell, doctors like Megan Best and Eloise Piercy.

We hope that the truth that has been made clear concerning the humanness of the embryo created by cloning will guide the ethical thinking of our representatives on an issue so profound and so unexplored. As Leon Kass reminded us, “cloning is about nothing less than whether human procreation remains human.” The embryo created by cloning is human in its nature, but excluded from the circle of human belonging and care by its unnatural – its ‘inhuman’ - means of creation. Such an act of exclusion, let alone the act of exploiting the cloned embryo for research, violates the very humanity science should seek to serve.

"Cloning Advocates Fail to Make the Case for Change"

MEDIA RELEASE 30th October
DO NO HARM! Australians for Ethical Medical Research
www.cloning.org.au

CLONING ADVOCATES FAIL TO MAKE THE CASE FOR CHANGE

“Cloning advocates have failed to make the case for change” said Dr David van Gend, spokesman for DO NO HARM! Australians for Ethical Stem Cell Research in response to the tabling of the Senate Community Affairs Committee’s report on proposed legislation to allow human cloning for research.

“The report shows that while some scientists continue to hype up the case for cloning other respected scientists like Emeritus Professor Jack Martin and leading adult stem cell researcher Professor Alan Mackay-Sim have demonstrated that there is no scientific justification for attempting to create human embryo clones as a source for stem cells for either therapies or research,” Dr van Gend said.

“In 2002-03 every parliament in Australia voted unanimously to prohibit the creation of human embryo clones for destructive research. Four States – WA, SA, Tasmania and NSW – and the Howard Government support a continued ban. There is nothing new in this report to justify the Senate abandoning the ethical and principled decision it made in 2002 that we should not create human life in order to destroy it in research”.

“The report does record the tremendous advances being made with adult stem cells, which are ethically acceptable to all Australians, in disease research and use in therapies. Stem cells from human embryo clones can never be used in therapies due to their inherent genetic damage and tendency to form tumors,” Dr van Gend said.

“The radical nature of this Bill is seen in the proposal to allow the creation of human embryos using eggs from aborted baby girls. Amazingly, many supporters of the Patterson bill seem to be unaware of this provision of her bill.

“This is inhuman legislation based on misguided science. In the light of this report we hope the Senate will decisively reject the Patterson cloning bill”.

POST-DOCTORAL SCIENTISTS WITH PRE-SCHOOL ETHICS

Ed. - this one is too good to miss! Dunno whether to laugh or cry - but read on...

Guest Blogger Rita Joseph went to the Senate Committee hearings into the Patterson cloning Bill... She argues that pro-cloning scientists exhibit all the self-willed passion and moral immaturity of six-year-olds.


After World War II, Omar Bradley predicted an age of “technological giants and moral pygmies”. True enough: a bunch of scientists today are employing some very stunted moral reasoning in their demand to clone human beings and use these embryonic human beings in lethal research.

When it comes to morality, cloning advocates are arguing like six-year-olds.

Having raised eleven children, I know quite a bit about six-year-olds, their wilful egotism, their flawed reasoning… I know all about their tantrums when they want badly to do something that they are utterly convinced will bring great happiness for themselves and their friends even though it will harm others who, in their eyes, don’t matter.[1]

Yes, these scientists sound very like six-year-olds when told “No, you may not do that”. When they wheedle Parliamentarians for permission, like obstinate children hell-bent on a dangerous new project, they play down the dangers and hype up the alleged benefits.

When told they must abide by that first principle of medical ethics “first do no harm”, they reply with classic “But Mummy…” rationalizations.

You may not harm others, I say, especially the little ones younger than you.

“But Mummy” they reply, “we have to. It is the only way. This is very important, Mummy…”[2]

Yes, darling. But there are other ways. Many good things are being discovered and developed right now, good things that don’t need us to do bad things to other human beings.

But Mummy we only want to harm a very small number of the very smallest kids—no one wants them—they won’t feel a thing—they’re not like us…[3]

No, dear, every single human being is like us, big or small, wanted or unwanted, whether they can feel or not feel. Just being human gives each one of them the same human rights as you and me. This important moral principl was agreed a long time ago. “All human beings are equal in dignity and rights.”

But Mummy it’s only so we can help heaps of other kids who are our friends, kids in wheel chairs, kids with …[4]

No, no. You may not harm some human beings in order to help others. This is another law that all good people agreed long long ago —“The end doesn’t justify the means.”

But Mummy we can get hundreds and hundreds of Very Important People to say that this can be done, that it will truly help our friends…

No darling; no matter how many people you can get to say that it can be done; it is whether it should be done that is the problem. No matter how much good you think it will do the kids you know, it’s still not right to harm little kids you don’t know.

But Mummy, it’s good to help our friends; surely it’s wrong not to do this for them…[5]

Well, you should do everything you can to help your friends, everything except deliberately doing something bad like hurting others much smaller than you and with no Mummy or Daddy to protect them. Remember the littlest kids with no friends have the same right to be helped as the biggest kids with heaps of friends.

But Mummy, what if the good things we can do from harming just a few of these littlest kids is going to make everything heaps better for millions across the whole wide world?[6]

No, my dear, not even then. Once we begin to “use” one human being to “save” other human beings, we are abusing human rights. “You may not do evil even that good may come of it”—another moral principle that good people have agreed for a long time.

But Mummy everybody else is doing it….[7]

No, everybody else is not doing it. Except for a handful of reckless hotheads, everybody else has agreed not to do this bad thing.

But Mummy, the others are going to get in front of us. It’s so unfair, Mummy. You’re making us lose the race.[8]

No, darling, we should not think of this as a race. We have to think about very serious things like this very carefully. It would be wrong to go hurtling down the road running over lots of the littlest ones along the way just because some big people want to be first.

But Mummy it’s not fair! If they can help their friends, why can’t we help ours?

Because there is a much more important kind of help that we must keep in place—not just for our friends but for everyone. In the long run, it is much more important to keep our part of the world working with fairness for everyone. Our moral principles must continue to protect every person, always and everywhere, no matter how young or old, or slow, or poor or unwanted. It is much better that we keep everyone safe, everyone who is sick, everyone in wheel chairs, our littlest human beings and oldest grandmas and grandpas. Everyone must be protected from being harmed or being used to make other people better off.

But Mummy if you don’t let me do what I want, I’ll run away from home. I’ll go to Jack and Jill’s home—their Mummy will let them do it. [9]

That’s fine—go right ahead. But listen to me carefully—no matter what harm other people are allowed to do to smaller ones in other homes—while you’re here in this home, you will live by our rules and our principles.

“But Mummy….”

That’s enough ‘But Mummy’s’. Go and wash your hands and get ready for dinner!

[1] Those who insist that cloned human embryos don’t matter deny the scientific and metaphysical truth that every human embryo is an embryonic human being, entitled by the very fact of being human to recognition of the dignity and worth that belong inherently to all members of the human family.

[2] Professor Alan Trounson, of Melbourne's Monash University, says therapeutic cloning should be allowed in Australia because it is the only way to get embryonic stem cells with a specific disease that can be studied as the condition progresses in the laboratory."This is a very important new approach," Trounson says.
The Age (http://www.theage.com.au/news/general/the-cell-division/2005/09/29/1127804607919.html) September 30, 2005 (All the quotes below are from this article “The Cell Division”.)

[3] “…embryos only have a significance when people want to use them to have a child. When they are created only for the purpose of research, they no longer have the same status", Professor Julian Savulescu, director of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford University

[4] Caption under photo (two people in wheelchairs) by Pat Scala: Pressing for change: Dr Paul Brock (left) James Shepherd and Joanna Knott argue that each of them would benefit from therapeutic cloning.

[5] “It would be immoral not to lift the ban [on cloning], argues the Australian ethicist Professor Julian Savulescu, director of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford University.”


[6] "This could save millions of lives." argues the Australian ethicist Professor Julian Savulescu, director of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford University

[7] “It is permitted in many countries, including Britain, South Korea, Singapore and Sweden.”
[These are rogue states who have reneged on the recent United Nations Declaration on Human Cloning in which the international community solemnly agreed “to protect adequately human life in the application of life sciences” and to “prohibit all forms of human cloning inasmuch as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life”.]

[8] “Science is like a horse race. The winner can’t be predicted beforehand. You have to let the horses run.”
Professor Julian Savulescu

[9] Dr Kuldip Sidhu, a stem cell researcher at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney, says "We've got to be in the race. We don't want a brain drain because of the legislation." Already one of the nation's leading stem cell researchers, Professor Martin Pera, of the Australian Stem Cell Centre in Melbourne, has said he will consider moving to another country if the ban is not lifted because his research would be compromised relative to colleagues overseas.

Insight and Foursight: Is there gold in them there hills?

This is a guest blog from Richard Egan filling for Dr David Van Gend who is enjoying a well earned break.

As the debate on Kay Patterson’s cloning bill draws closer the pro-cloning lobby are once again pulling out all the stops in their hyped up claims for the promise of therapeutic cloning.

The Insight program on SBS featured paraplegic Brock Turner and a young man, James Shepherd, with juvenile diabetes, making emotional pleas to allow cloning in order that Brock could walk again and James go to sleep at night without the fear of never waking up. Who would dare deny them hope?

Never mind that as, Emeritus Professor Jack Martin, pointed out there has been no proof of concept of the safety and efficacy of therapeutic cloning in any animal model.

Never mind, as James Sherley**, Associate Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT, who is currently visiting Australia said “The unique feature of embryonic stem cells that allowed them to turn into any cell of the body, known as pluripotency, created a problem when researchers injected them into tissue.

“When you put them in an environment where they can grow and develop, they make lots of different kind of tissues. This tumour formation property is an inherent feature of the cells.

“And all you have to do is simply inject them into an animal tissue – this happens at very high efficiency.

“And although some might say we can solve the tumour problem down the road, that's equivalent to saying we can solve the cancer problem and we may, but that's a long time coming.”

Never mind, as Professor John Burn, medical director of the Institute of Human Genetics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, admitted when pressed on the Insight program, that neither his institute, which holds one of the two British licenses to create human embryo clones, nor anyone else in the world has yet produced a human blastocyst by somatic cell nuclear transfer, let alone derived embryonic stem cells from a human embryo clone.

The same Professor Burn assures us cheerfully that the would-be cloners have “gold nuggets in their pockets” as they come down from there hills!!

Similarly, Dr Graham Mitchell and Sir Gustav Nossal, trading as Foursight Associates Pty Ltd, a company in strategic alliances with JBWere Private Equity Fund, Challenger Biotech Capital Ltd and KPMG Melbourne, claim in their report to Premier Steve Bracks and Victorian Minister for Innovation, John Brumby that: “a broad SCNT approach is required for stem cell-based regenerative medicine to achieve its undoubted promise.”

The Foursight report mentions three hurdles to using embryonic stem cells for therapies. These are (a) transplant rejection; (b) guidance of the ES cells down the correct pathways of differentiation and (c) ensuring that cells of such great proliferative potential do not develop into cancers, even on rare occasions.

The Foursight report breathlessly proposes SCNT (cloning) as the way to overcome the transplant rejection hurdle:

“If transplant rejection is the biggest single concern then this is where the extraordinary, legislatively-constrained technology of SCNT – somatic cell nuclear transfer- comes into its own. Clearly, SCNT has the potential to overcome the transplantation barrier through “personalization” of the ES cells.”

The Foursight report fails to address the other two hurdles or to explain what possible reason there is to lift the legislative ban on cloning now before these hurdles are overcome in animal models. What is the point of being able to do stem cell transplants that won’t be rejected but cannot be reliably differentiated into the required cell types and have a tendency to form cancers?

The Foursight report also glosses over a fourth hurdle, the problem of abnormalities in genetic coding, referring to two papers demonstrating equivalence between mouse ESCs from cloned mice with those from fertilised mice. However, given the very evident problem of abnormal genetic programming that is a feature of reproductive cloning of animals, proof that programming and epigenetic effects do not occur in SCNT-derived cell lines will require much more work than this, including especially study of expression of a very much wider array of genes.

The Foursight report is a brief attachment to a longer report, the Gough report, prepared by Dr. Nicholas Gough of Nick Gough & Associates Pty Ltd, biotechnology consultants with a declared interest of holding options to acquire ordinary shares in the Singaporean stem cell company ES Cell International Pte Ltd.

The Gough report admits that “Whilst generation of personalised ES cells by SCNT for specific patient is a theoretical option, given the high costs and length of time involved, it is unlikely that production of personalised therapeutic tissues by genomic replacement would represent a practical strategy.”

There you have it.

In other words, the hyped up hope being offered to Brock Turner and James Shepherd, of therapies for spinal cord injury and for juvenile diabetes using stem cells derived from human embryo clones made using their own somatic cell nuclei is “not a practical strategy”.

Rather, according to the Gough report, hope lies in producing “a bank of some 150 human ES lines [that] could provide a beneficial match for 25 to 50% of potential recipients in a target population (and a 95% chance of providing a full match for at least 8% of patients”. [Such a bank could be developed under Australia’s existing law only no-one has got ESCs to work safely and efficaciously yet.] Oh, and in other ways, yet to be discovered, of overcoming the transplant rejection hurdle.

There is thus a blatant contradiction between the two parts of this hybrid report that has led Premier Bracks to claim “While there is much to do and the road in curing these diseases is a long one it is clear from this report that our greatest roadblock is our scientists’ inability to perform this work [cloning] in human cells in Australia” and his Minister for Innovation, John Brumby to claim that “SCNT remains the only tool available that can create ‘tailored’ stem cells that would be a genetic match to a patient.”

The Foursight part of the report claims that cloning will overcome the transplant hurdle but the Gough report, whose comprehensive literature review and analysis has informed the views of the Foursight team of Mitchell and Sir Gus, states that “it is unlikely that production of personalised therapeutic tissues by genomic replacement would represent a practical strategy.”

The Gough report really only commends cloning as a means to “allow the generation of ES cells derived from individuals with specific genotypes for dissection of complex multigenic diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, motor neurone disease, and others of unknown cause or multigenic origin. The ability to generate specific differentiated progeny cells that express aspects of a disease phenotype from ES cells of defined genotype will be invaluable in dissection of such diseases.”

Minister Brumby picks up on this alternative purpose for cloning – the only “practical” use according to the Gough report – in his statement that “SCNT remains the only tool available that can create ‘tailored’ stem cells that … would help to model diseases for drug discovery.”

This completely ignores the still unanswered and seemingly unanswerable challenge to the would-be cloners from Professor Alan Mackay-Sim at Griffith University in his submission to the Lockhart Review:

“It is often stated that therapeutic cloning will be required to investigate the biology of certain diseases and to find cures for them by studying embryonic stem cells and their progeny derived from the patients… Therapeutic cloning is a long and laborious procedure that will require donor oocytes and will produce an inexact “copy” of the donor because of the handful of mitochondrial genes passed on through the donor egg. An alternative source of stem cells for these important investigations is provided by adult stem cells. In our lab we already have over 40 adult cell lines derived from persons with schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, motor neuron disease, and mitochondrial disease. These are relatively easily obtained, easy to grow in the lab in large numbers and amenable to cell culture studies, gene expression profiling and proteomics analyses. It is probable that such cell lines as these will render therapeutic cloning irrelevant and impractical.”

Mr Bracks has announced that the Victorian Government would convene a Scientific Leaders’ Forum, to be held on Monday October 16, to consider the findings of the report on Scientific Progress in the Embryonic Stem Cell Field. The Premier’s Office has not replied to requests for more details about this Forum. One could no doubt write in advance the script of hype and evasion that the selected invitees will voice in welcoming the report that “there is gold in them there hills”.



** Melbourne blogsters should come and hear James Sherley, Associate Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT speak on Cloning and stem cell research: what we are not being told on Thursday, October 12, 5.30 pm at Prince Philip Theatre, University of Melbourne (Architecture Building, 150m west of Campus Gate 3, Swanston St)

Professor Sherley is a graduate of Harvard University. When the Harvard Review Board voted to allow cloning he wrote:

“A defining feature of our humanity is that we also have the capacity to do the same for others whom we do not know. If the hands of members of the Harvard review board were sensitive enough, they could come to know human embryos better. They could feel that the smallest such embryos, like us, are warm to the touch, that they move as they grow, and they breathe just as surely as we do.”

Professor Sherley has been brought to Australia by Doctors Against Cloning. He is visiting Melbourne after three days briefing Senators and MHRs in Canberra.

THE SLIPPERY SLOPE TO LIVE-BIRTH CLONING AND FETUS FARMING

Cloning for research will perfect the technique needed for cloning for live-birth and for fetal organ harvesting. While this will remain illegal, for now, in Australia , live-birth cloning is being attempted overseas and cloned-fetus farming is being promoted in major journals. Further abuses of this sort can only occur if we permit and perfect the first steps in cloning.

It is not responsible to dismiss ‘slippery slope’ arguments as ‘scare-mongering’. The phenomenon of stepwise progression towards a previously unthinkable state of affairs is a commonplace in human history.

This phenomenon is described by Robert Manne as “a slow and subtle transformation of ethical sensibility. Over time we become blind to how we once thought and what we once valued. We become accustomed or attracted to thoughts we would once have found unthinkable.”

In four short years, Senator Patterson has ‘become accustomed or attracted to’ thoughts of therapeutic cloning, which in 2002 she found unthinkable – see the last Blog. Now she is indignant at any thought that her Bill is preparing the way for live-birth cloning – which in her fickle sort of way she currently finds ‘unthinkable’.

Why should her earnest moral rejection of live-birth cloning be taken seriously, given her merry slide in the last 4 years down the preceding stage of the slippery slope?

Let’s face reality: there are already scientists and ethicists defending ‘live-birth’ cloning, and one scientist in the US who has published the claim to have a cloned embryo in the fridge waiting for a surrogate womb.

On the science of live-birth cloning, no less an authority than the American Society for Reproductive Medicine has pointed to the obvious logic of ‘therapeutic’ cloning techniques (SCNT) facilitating later ‘reproductive’ techniques:

“If undertaken, the development of SCNT for such therapeutic purposes, in which embryos are not transferred for pregnancy, is likely to produce knowledge that could be used to achieve reproductive SCNT.” [i]

And on the ‘ethics’ of live-birth cloning, as recently as this year, a Melbourne scientist, D Elsner, wrote in the Journal of Medical Ethics in support of the right to live-birth cloning (which he calls HRC: Human Reproductive Cloning):

“Several scientists have been outspoken in their intent to pursue HRC… A model to be used to determine when it is acceptable to use HRC and other new assisted reproductive technologies, balancing reproductive freedom and safety concerns, is proposed. Justifications underpinning potential applications of HRC are discussed, and it is determined that these are highly analogous to rationalisations used to justify IVF treatment. It is concluded that people wishing to conceive using HRC should have a prima facie negative right to do so.”

Senator Patterson can make all the hand-on-heart assertions she likes that her Bill is not going to further the cause of ‘reproductive’ cloning: her Bill is exactly what is required by those already further down the slippery slope, who do not find ‘reproductive’ cloning unthinkable at all, and who need the OK to perfect the technique of SCNT cloning.

But much worse than live-birth cloning, there are scientists and ethicists defending ‘fetus farming’ - the plan to grow cloned embryos to the fetal stage where we can butcher them for organs for transplant.

Oxford Professor Julian Savulescu has argued that we not only have a duty to clone, but to grow the clones until they are big enough to kill and harvest organs from to overcome the shortage of organ transplant tissue:

“The most publicly justifiable application of human cloning, if there is one at all, is to provide self-compatible cells or tissues for medical use, especially transplantation. Some have argued that this raises no new ethical issues above those raised by any form of embryo experimentation. I argue that this research is less morally problematic than other embryo research. Indeed, it is not merely morally permissible but morally required that we employ cloning to produce embryos or fetuses for the sake of providing cells, tissues or even organs for therapy, followed by abortion of the embryo or fetus.”
Should we clone human beings? Cloning as a source of tissue for transplantation. Julian Savulescu. Journal of Medical Ethics 25.2 (April 1999): p87.

And Dr Stuart Newman, professor of cell biology and anatomy, New York Medical College, predicted this outcome – the inevitable demand for more offensive experimentation, once the earlier abuses are safely legislated for - before the US Senate Subcommittee on Health, 3/5/2002

“Cloning embryos for producing embryo stem cells will, by failing to deliver on its promises, inevitably lead to calls to extend the life span of clonal embryos so as to permit harvesting developmentally more advanced cells and tissue for research and potential therapies… And once stem cell harvesting from two-month clonal embryos is in place, who could resist the pleas to extend the time frame so that liver and bone marrow could be obtained from six-month clonal fetuses? …This is my prediction… frustration over lack of progress in producing safe and effective therapeutics from embryo stem cells will lead to calls to permit harvesting of embryo germ cells from two to three month clonal embryos…”

And the practical experiments of cloned-fetus farming are being done in animal models – not out of tender concern for the animals’ health and quality of life, but as a model for human cloned-fetus farming.

So in July last year the director of Advanced Cell Technology, Robert Lanza, successfully cloned cow fetuses and aborted them to obtain differentiated liver tissue.[ii] In a press release, Lanza hailed this technology, expressing hope that it would be used “in the future to treat patients with diverse diseases”. He doesn’t mean pet cows, but human patients, therefore needing human cloned fetuses to be created and killed for their organs.

Given that Senator Patterson’s Bill allows for the harvesting of ‘precursor’ cells from aborted fetuses in order to create embryos who will themselves be destroyed in research, is her proposal really much less macabre than the proposal of fetus farming? Allowing an aborted baby girl to be the mother of a cloned embryo who will itself be exploited and destroyed in the lab.

Any Bill that gives the green light to cloning is culpable not only for the intrinsic offense of creating human embryos solely for research, but for making possible these subsequent vicious violations of our humanity.

But no worries: by that time, after a further transformation of sensibility, we will have become ‘accustomed or attracted to thoughts we would once have found unthinkable’. We will have become even less human.

This is our future, if we in Australia support the first steps in human cloning. This generation of legislators would be held responsible for lifting that lid on Pandora’s Box, allowing hideous and inhuman things to come out – or keeping it closed.


[i] American Society for Reproductive Medicine Ethics Committee; "Human somatic cell nuclear transfer (cloning)"; Fertility and Sterility 74, 873-876; November 2000

[ii] Robert Lanza et al., "Long-Term Bovine Hematopoietic Engraftment with Clone-Derived Stem Cells," Cloning and Stem Cells 7 (June 2005): 95-106.

Patterson's 'Clone & Kill' Bill: an exercise in dehumanisation

Has a more repulsive and inhuman Bill ever been brought before the Australian Parliament?

Senator Patterson’s Bill does more than just allow the unethical cloning of human embryos with their destruction in mind. It allows scientists to create animal-human hybrid embryos, it allows scientists to create human embryos with more than two genetic parents, and it allows scientists to create human embryos where one of the parents is an aborted human foetus.

Under her Bill aborted baby girls could become mothers of human embryos that will themselves be killed for research!

This is sick science; this is a moral assault on our humanity, on the meaning of the human family, and on the inviolable right of any living human being not to be exploited and killed as subhuman material.

Senator Patterson is asking her colleagues to follow her lead in abandoning their united ethical position of only four years ago. In 2002 the Parliament voted to allow research on ‘spare’ IVF embryos who were ‘going to die anyway’, but it unanimously declared it was wrong to create new human embryos solely for research, whether by cloning or any other means. Paterson was amongst the most outspoken opponents of such an abuse.

She stated in 2002: “I believe strongly that it is wrong to create human embryos solely for research”, yet today she tables a Bill permitting the creation of human embryos, by a range of morally degraded methods, solely for research.

She stated in 2002: “It is not morally permissible to develop an embryo with the intent of truncating it at an early stage for the benefit of another human being”, but now what was impermissible is suddenly permissible – and no explanation for this ethical backflip is given!

She assured us in 2002 that there would be no slippery slope: that because “the Prohibition of Human Cloning Bill 2002 bans the creation of a human embryo for a purpose other than achieving a pregnancy” therefore “it is disingenuous to suggest that approving this research will open the door to further killing of living human beings”. Now she proposes the further killing of any number of living human beings – whether created by SCNT cloning, or from the eggs of aborted human babies, or hybridized with animals, or from multiple parents.

Our Parliament is faced with a clear choice: it can declare again, as in 2002, that it is wrong to create human embryos with their destruction in mind, or it can abandon this just and humane ethical position, instead supporting Patterson's barbaric proposal to create and kill human embryos on the altar of speculative science.

NATASHA OUT-LOCKHARTS LOCKHART WHILE KAY DOES A MORAL BACKFLIP

This is your guest blogger Richard Egan filling in for my colleague Dr David Van Gend.

At 6pm last Thursday, 14 September Senator Natasha Stott-Despoja tabled an exposure draft of the Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) and Related Research Amendment Bill 2006. The Bill is co-sponsored by Senator Ruth Webber.

According to Senator Stott-Despoja’s tabling speech the Bill is “for information and committee use”. That is to say, it is not intended to be voted upon. This is just as well as, besides the core ethical problems with this Bill, it is poorly drafted, and if passed in its present form would simply be unviable. More on this below.

The title of the Bill focuses on “somatic cell nuclear transfer”. The first object of the Bill (Section 3) is to “provide for the continuing national development of responsible medical research through the use of stem cells including innovative techniques such as somatic cell nuclear transfer”. Of course, somatic cell nuclear transfer is just a description of one method of cloning – the method used to produce our late and lamented woolly friend Dolly. It has not yet been used to produce a human embryo clone let alone one that has developed to the stage at which embryonic stem cells can be harvested.

The only claim still standing – after the six month hoax perpetrated by Korean scientist Hwang Woo Suk who persuaded the whole world, including the Lockhart Committee was exposed -- to actually have produced a human embryo clone is from the Newcastle team. This team didn’t use somatic cell nuclear transfer. Using 36 ova procured from women undergoing IVF they managed only to produce a single blastocyst by enucleating an ovum within one hour of collecting it from the woman and fusing it with an embryonic stem cell. This method seems to have been chosen because the nucleus of an undifferentiated embryonic stem cell would need less reprogramming by the ovum then a somatic or body cell. However, there doesn’t seem to be any possible practical application of this technique. Even if the blastocyst made this way had survived long enough for stem cells to be extracted all that would have been achieved would be cloning an embryo you had already killed for its stem cells in order to get more stem cells with the same DNA somewhat scrambled by the cloning process. What’s the point?

The Newcastle team has never had this research published in a peer review journal. Since then they have lost their lead researcher Dr Miodrag Stojkovic to the Prince Felipe Research Centre in Valencia.

As Gretchen Vogel noted in her review article Cell biology: picking up the pieces after Hwang would be human cloners “face two substantial hurdles: a limited supply of human oocytes and a lack of data on how to use them most efficiently”.

Natasha’s Bill maintains the current ban on giving any “valuable consideration” in return for human eggs. “Valuable consideration” is defined in relation to the supply of a human egg to include “any inducement, discount or priority in the provision of a service to the person”.

The Newcastle team were getting eggs by asking women undergoing IVF to hand over two of their eggs if they produce 12 or more in one treatment cycle. By this means they only netted only 66 eggs for research in 7 months. Not enough it seems to make any further advances in human cloning! They succeeded in getting the Human Fertility and Embryo Authority to issue a license permitting them to offer discounted IVF to women in order to up egg procurement rate. The Human Fertility and Embryo Authority is now considering a general change to the rules to allow payment for eggs.

Californian would-be cloner Renee Reijo Pera is also calling for a change to the rules to allow payment to women for their eggs. In the United States it is common practice to pay women to have their eggs harvested for use in creating IVF embryos for infertile women. The going rate is as high as $50,000. However, under Proposition 71, by which Californians voted $3 billion for stem cell research including cloning, payment to women for eggs for cloning is prohibited.

Some commentators have suggested that eggs which fail to fertilise during IVF procedures could be used. However, these have proved ineffective in cloning research. Good, fresh eggs are needed!

But it seems that women everywhere in the world are sensibly reluctant to undergo the risks of ovarian hyperstimulation, including death, simply to accommodate the demands of the would-be cloners.

As Dr Van Gend suggested in his most recent blog the only alternative to inviting women to risk death from ovarian hyperstimulation in order to keep the would-be cloners supplied with enough eggs to play with is to use animal eggs instead.

And it is here that Natasha out-Lockharts the Lockhart Review itself.

Recommendation 6 of the Review was that “Development of a human–animal hybrid or chimeric embryo should continue to be prohibited, except as indicated in Recommendation 17” Recommendation 17 was that “Certain interspecies fertilisation and development up to, but not including, the first cell division should be permitted for testing gamete viability to assist ART training and practice.” Additionally, (and in contradiction to Recommendation 6) Recommendation 24 was that “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”.
The existing legislation prohibits the creating of either a chimeric embryo or a hybrid embryo. A chimeric embryo is defined as a human embryo into which a cell, or any component part of a cell, of an animal has been introduced. A hybrid embryo is defined as (a) an embryo created by the fertilisation of a human egg by animal sperm; or (b) an embryo created by the fertilisation of an animal egg by human sperm; or (c) a human egg into which the nucleus of an animal cell has been introduced; or (d) an animal egg into which the nucleus of a human cell has been introduced.
Lockhart explicitly recommended retaining a complete prohibition on creation of chimeric embryo. Natasha’s Bill allows the creation of chimeric embryos.
Lockhart only recommended allowing creating of hybrids by fertilisation [methods (a) and (b) above] up to the first cell division. Natasha’s Bill would allow a scientist to fertilise a human egg with animal sperm (or vice versa) and let the resulting embryo grow for 14 days before it was destroyed.
Lockhart did recommend allowing the creating of hybrid embryos by method (d) above. Natasha has adopted this recommendation despite the Chief Scientist Jim Peacock’s advice that such hybrids would be scientifically useless.
Lockhart did not recommend lifting the prohibition on creating hybrids by method (c), that is putting the nucleus of an animal cell into a human egg. Natasha is happy for scientists to try this one too.
I mentioned earlier that Natasha’s Bill was – like all attempts at human cloning to date –unviable. Her new Division 2 of Part 2 of the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act contains a list of things that are prohibited unless permitted by a license issued by the NHMRC Licensing Committee. This list includes: creating a human embryo clone; creating a human embryo other than by fertilisation; creating a human embryo with mitochondrial DNA from more than 2 persons; creating a human embryo with precursor cells taken from a human embryo or a human fetus (yes, this means fertilising the eggs taken from an aborted baby girl) and creating a chimeric or hybrid embryo.
However, the Bill makes no provision for the NHMRC Licensing Committee to issue licenses for creating any of these embryos. Rather the Bill merely provides for licenses to be issued for the use of such embryos. This is just one of the serious drafting flaws in the Bill.
In a section dealing with consent Natasha’s Bill (Section 17 of Schedule 2) requires consent from either (but not both) the egg donor or the somatic cell donor before a licensed embryo, for example, a human embryo clone, is used.
Oh well. Senator Stott-Despoja said her Bill was just for “information and Committee use.” This is just a dress rehearsal for the real show which is Senator Backflip Patterson’s Bill.
You remember!. The Senator who said in 2002 “I believe strongly that it is wrong to create human embryos solely for research. It is not morally permissible to develop an embryo with the intent of truncating it at an early stage for the benefit of another human being. However, utilising embryos that are excess to a couple's needs after a successful implantation is a very different matter. I believe it is disingenuous to suggest that approving this research will open the door to further killing of living human beings when the Prohibition of Human Cloning Bill 2002 bans the creation of a human embryo for a purpose other than achieving a pregnancy.”

Her only defence so far for her extraordinary moral backflip in now sponsoring a bill which will permit what she so recently told us so firmly was “wrong” and “not morally permissible” and will open the door to further killing of living human beings that she so self-righteously assured us was firmly shut has been that she is entitled to change her mind.

The latest word is that Senator Patterson may have her Bill ready by the end if this week – September 22. (I’ll believe it when I see it!) That will leave the people of Australia just twelve days to let the Senate Community Affairs Committee know by their October 4 deadline for submissions that unlike Senator Patterson we don’t believe that fundamental moral principles can change – let alone change in four years. It is still as wrong today as it was in 2002 to “create human embryos solely for research” and to “develop an embryo with the intent of truncating it at an early stage for the benefit of another human being”.

Hybrids or hyperstimulation: the ugly choice of an inhuman science.

That is the choice faced by two advocates of cloning, Senator Stott-Despoya – whose draft Bill to allow human cloning was tabled Thursday – and Chief Scientist Peacock, who addressed MPs the day before.

There is no happy middle way for the supporter of cloning. Either we harvest from women the hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of eggs needed for each cloning experiment, or we harvest them from pigs or rabbits.

Thousands, in the case of Prof Hwang Woo-Suk, South Korea’s ‘Supreme Scientist’, who coerced his junior researchers into contributing to the two thousand eggs he needed to create the eleven cloned embryos that made him famous. Until it was found in December last year – the very week of the tabling of the Lockhart report – that he was a filthy fraud, his science a pile of lies, and the two thousand plus eggs had made not a single clone.

Perhaps only dozens, in the case of the Newcastle team who, around the same time as Hwang, claimed to have cloned a single embryo from three dozen eggs from eleven women. Perhaps… except their research was not published in a peer-reviewed journal, so in scientific terms it is not yet authenticated, and the team has had no further success.

It was unfortunate timing for the UK supporters of cloning, that just as officials in the UK agreed to permit discounted IVF if women donated eggs for research, a women died of complications from the ovarian hyperstimulation required to produce multiple eggs.

Hence the campaign, Hands off our Ovaries, launched on International Women’s Day, to protest the exploitation of women in this new biotechnology.

Chief Scientist Peacock came out against animal-human hybrids on the grounds that the mixing of DNA in the resultant embryo would make it a poor model for research into human disease. But in saying this, he is a lone voice against the consensus of IVF scientists and the Lockhart committee itself – which says we must use animal eggs, since there is no possibility of obtaining sufficient eggs from women.

As note in this Blog a very long time ago, August 28th, the Lockhart Review of our cloning laws itself recommends animal-human hybrid clones: “In order to reduce the need for human oocytes, transfer of human somatic cell nuclei into animal oocytes should be allowed”. See p.170 of the Report. And Senator Stott-Despoya wants to make Lockhart's animal-human hybrid fantasies law.

Likewise cloning advocate Prof Alan Trounson suggested using rabbit eggs to clone human embryos – a process which does indeed leave rabbit DNA in the embryo and makes the clone a human-animal hybrid.Trounson said last year, “Since there are plenty of rabbit eggs around, if we could make that work it would remove the concern about accessing human eggs in any numbers”.

There remain two options, then, for this wonderful new science of cloning: either commercialise women’s ovaries, putting at risk especially poorer women who will take money for their eggs – or settle for animal-human hybrid clones.

And all this for a science which is as redundant as it is wrong: a useless tinkering with embryos in order to get ‘patient specific stem cells’ that we can already get from our own adult tissues!

What really does drive scientists to lobby for cloning, given that the science is so shonky? What are we not being told?

That will be a topic for the week after next, when you regular Blogger returns.

But next week, guest Blogger Richard Egan, DO NO HARM’s agent in WA, will delve deeper into this critical issue of eggsploitation, and continue conscientiously to expose, rebut, and show due contempt for the strategy of the cloning lobby in Australia...

“IT’S ME PROSTATE, DOC!” – YOUR WEEKEND DOSE OF EMBRYONIC SNAKE-OIL

It is pitiful, reading the weekend papers, to see the pseudo-science of embryonic stem cells clinging like a tick to the back of adult stem cell science.

The embryo / cloning lobby’s endless tricks with rats have no prospect ever of moving to humans, and they know it, because the very nature of embryonic cells – as explained to Mal Washer in the recent Blog – is to create teratomas, complex tumours with tissues from all three ‘embryonic layers’ of the body. Unlike adult stem cells (ASCs), which just become the tissue they are asked to become, and nothing else, and are therefore safely used in humans.

Ethics committees don’t mind rats dying of brain tumours or being crippled with knee tumours from the injection of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) – but humans?

The cloning snake-oil salesman is therefore reduced to one dishonourable tactic: to showcase authentic breakthroughs in adult stem cell science, and then by a trick of language sneak in the impression – never quite direct enough to be a lie - that embryonic stem cells can do this too.

So in today’s Weekend Australian ‘Magazine’ (9-10 Sept) we have startling headlines on heart disease, and how ‘researchers believe they will soon be able to regrow healthy ones’. For those in the know, this obviously refers to the injection of adult stem cells from the blood and from muscle into the ailing heart. This research was underway in Newcastle in 2002, and Do No Harm highlighted its successes then, and it is now a multi-centre international clinical trial. So while the headlines of ‘regrowing hearts’ are a little overexcited, the present clinical trials are certainly cause for restrained enthusiasm.

So cardiologist Joshua Hare says of regenerative stem cell science: “Some say it’s the biggest development in biology since the discovery of DNA”. A case study is reported, where cardiologist Suku Thambar at Newcastle’s Hunter Medical Research will “inject about 200 million specially grown adult stem cells into areas of Henry’s heart he identifies as needing repair. The source of the cells will be Henry’s own bone marrow.”

All fine so far – but then the subliminal sneak on behalf of the embryo lobby: “In Australia, scientists are working on embryonic and adult stem cells that could rebuild heart muscle”. Did you catch that? Do you see the strategy? After paragraphs about adult stem cells rebuilding human heart muscle, slip in a mention of embryonic cells in the same breath. Conclusion: give them both a prize!

Don’t mention that embryonic cells can only ‘rebuild heart muscle’ of puffing, pink-in-the-face rats, never humans. Sure, embryonic stem cells may provoke some regrowth of rodent heart muscle, but as always, left long enough, many of these cells will produce tumours.

It is not clear who advised the journalist in the Weekend Australian Magazine, but we know who advised the two page centerfold on “Your stem cell body repair kit” in last weekend’s Herald Sun.

Prof Bob Williamson is chief cloning lobbyist for the Australian Academy of Science; he wrote their submission to the Lockhart enquiry. He is across both the ethical and scientific strategies for getting cloning accepted. First, make out that the cloned embryo is not really a human embryo – so there is no ethical issue with creating it for research. Second, make out that embryo science and cloning is up there with adult stem cell science - so that there is a compelling scientific need to allow cloning.

On the scientific strategy, to his credit, Williamson focuses more on the proposed (and essentially irrelevant) research role of cloning while dismissing the widespread hype over using cloning for direct cell therapy.

But on the ethical strategy, Williamson, a professor of genetics in Melbourne, plays hard ball. He is a very prominent protagonist of the nonsense ‘It’s not an embryo, because there is no sperm involved’. (To which Dolly the former cloned sheep embryo replies ‘Baaaaad biology, Bob. No sperm needed to make me.’)

Williamson has patiently played this biological word-game – this deliberate strategy of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (see Blog on ‘the great lie’) - since the news first broke of the Korean cloning success (later, of course, found to be a fraud).

So in the Sydney Morning Herald of May 21st last year:
‘Professor Williamson said the technique reproduced genetic material from a living person and the intermediate cellular products should not be called embryos, because they were not formed by the union of egg and sperm.’

And again in an opinion piece this year in the SMH:
‘Nuclear transfer from a skin or muscle cell into an inactivated egg does not give an embryo; it gives cells that are genetically identical to the cells of the sick person from whom the cell was taken.’

One wearies of stating the biological obvious: that using an egg and sperm is only one way of creating an embryo - cloning and parthenogenesis are two others. In all cases, what is created looks just like an embryo, grows and develops just like an embryo, in fact - it is an embryo!

The journal Nature in its July 2005 editorial, “Stem-cell biologists should not try to change the definition of the word embryo” accused scientists like Williamson of “playing semantic games in an effort to evade scrutiny”. It stated the biological fact that:

“Whether taken from a fertility clinic or made through cloning, a blastocyst embryo has the potential to become a fully functional organism. And appearing to deny that fact will not fool die-hard opponents of this research. If anything, it will simply open up scientists to the accusation that they are trying to distance themselves from difficult moral issues by changing the terms of the debate.”

Likewise, in response to this organised worldwide attemtpt to redefine and dehumanize the cloned embryo, America’s foremost ethicist, Leon Kass pleaded: “We must call things by their right names and not disguise what is going on with misleading nomenclature. The initial product of the cloning technique is without doubt a living cloned human embryo”. (May 29th 2005, New York Times).

Memo from Kass to Williamson: let’s draw the line at misleading nomenclature.

Moving from the ethical word-game that ‘it’s not an embryo’ to the scientific word-game that ‘embryonic stem cells can do it too’: the Herald Sun centrefold (Sept 2nd) showcases stem cell advances in thirteen different conditions, from disease of the heart, liver, brain and bones, to regrowing hair. Of course, all the actual human therapies use only adult stem cells (including cord blood stem cells). But misleading references to embryonic stem cells cling like parasites to the sections on knees, bladder and ears.

We cannot know to what extent, if any, these sneaky references were at the behest of scientific advisor Williamson – perhaps it was done against his advice, since he is not given to hyping direct cell therapies using ESCs - but we can only wish he had taken more trouble to make the journalist’s report less misleading.

On ‘knees’, after reference to adult stem cell trials in human cartilage repair we hear that experts ‘have succeeded in turning stem cells harvested from embryos into healthy new cartilage’. Yeah, right – but in rodents, not humans! Why is that distinction not made clear to the weekend reader? And of course no reference to the disastrous tumours in mice trials using embryonic stem cells.

On ‘bladder’, after reporting current Australian trials of adult stem cells in women with incontinence, the report mentions some Melbourne scientists who have grown ‘a man-made human prostate from embryonic stem cells’. Wow – sounds like an off-the-shelf solution for every male over 60! But what the report did not clarify is that this prostate was made by man for mice, not by man for man. The prostate was a mouse-human hybrid organ, since, reportedly, the research involved combined human ESCs with mouse prostate cells, and then used a mouse as the host to grow the prostate. Hardly a ‘man-made human prostate’. Just a mouse prostate fused with human cells. And nobody is proposing that this prostate be used in humans. Tiny, frequent mouse-wees are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Finally, in the section on ‘ears’ we hear of a team ‘exploring whether stem cells from embryos could restore hearing to the deaf’, but the report is not interested in restoring understanding to the dumb. If it was, it would make clear that such experiments with ESCs can only ever be on animals, for reasons including the tumour problem, immune rejection and genetic instability. For humans, adult stem cells are the only possible tools for the job.

Given that the weekend reader is likely, as a demographic, to be troubled by deafness, prostatism and arthritis, this mischievous Herald Sun centrefold certainly pitches well to its market.

And given how important it is for the cloning lobby to pretend that embryonic stem cells are a viable part of human cell therapies, the ‘spin’ is to be expected.

But another name for such scientific spin is ‘false advertising’. It brings no honour to the Australian Academy of Science to be associated in any way with such false advertising, with the selling of embryonic snake-oil to an unsuspecting public.