Lookout Lockhart Lobby - you’ve been Googled!

The rot of bias goes deeper than we thought. Not only is the acting Chair of the Lockhart Committee, Loane Skene, on the record as an apologist for cloning from at least 2000 (see earlier posts), but our intrepid Googler from the West, DO NO HARM’s Richard Egan, has turned up similar evidence on two of the other five Lockhart members:

Associate Professor Ian Kerridge (June 2001): "Therapeutic cloning has massive potential. Animal work has shown promising insights into how it can be used to repair tissues that can't normally repair themselves or for which there is a shortage. There are strong moral imperatives to do stem cell and cloning research.”

Professor Peter Schofield (9 October 2001) “Parts 4 and 5 of the [Human Reproductive Cloning and the Trans-Species Fertilisation] Bill [NSW] will allow research on human stem cells, including embryonic stem cells and their use in human therapeutic cloning. This is to be commended as it provides both a regulatory basis by which exciting and significant new developments in medical research can be progressed while providing clarity and simplicity about lines of investigation that will not be permitted because of overwhelming ethical concerns.”

Ouch! Will this send the remaining three members of this ‘impartial, open-minded’ committee, who so earnestly sought the views of Australians, scurrying to see if Google uncovers any compromising comments on them as well?

The theory that Lockhart was a carefully stacked committee does fit the available facts. The theory that this was an ethically prejudiced elite, appointed by largely pro-cloning Premiers in thrall to certain scientific interests, vetted by pro-cloning Minister Julie Bishop, a committee whose recommendations could be safely known in advance, and which continues to act as a dedicated lobby group long after it officially (19/12/05) ceased to exist… well, let the reader decide.

Otherwise how can one account for the behaviour of the committee regarding its two ‘terms of reference’: to assess any change in the science of cloning since 2002, and to assess any change in community attitudes to cloning since 2002?

On the first, changes in science, the Lockhart Committee based their recommendations upon the celebrated cloning experiments of Hwang, but when Hwang was exposed as a total fraud (the same week as their report was tabled, before the ink was even dry), the committee did not see fit to recall and revise their document! Why not? Not part of the campaign script? They might be cheeky enough to say it is because their committee had ceased to exist on 19th December, and therefore they had no power to review their document – cute, but they can’t have it both ways: they cannot continue to ‘exist’ as a committee for the purposes of lobbying for cloning, but not ‘exist’ as a committee for purposes of correcting key recommendations based on scientific fraud.

On the second term of reference, changes in community attitudes, why did the committee ignore the one major piece of published research, that of Swinburne university in 2004, which found a substantial majority of us did not feel comfortable with scientists cloning embryos for stem cells? Preferring instead to be guided by the ‘community attitudes’ of six unrepresentative citizens, the Lockhart Committee.

The neglect of the Swinburne research is academically unprofessional, at the very least. It is cynical misrepresentation of the truth at worst.

But if the political purpose of Skene, Schofield, Kerridge et al was to use the high ground of an advisory committee to ‘lobby’, ever so elegantly, for their own radical preference on cloning, would we expect them to admit that their scientific recommendations were based on fraud, or that their description of change in community attitudes was based on a careful ignoring of unwanted evidence?

One thing we know: that among these six citizens there was not a single person who defended the humane ethical principle that carried the unanimous vote of Parliament in 2002 – that it is simply wrong to create new human embryos with the sole purpose of research. And therefore, at the heart of the cloning question, the committee was unrepresentative – in short, ethically biased – and while they are welcome to their radical opinions, they must not pretend to be speaking for the public, nor presume to overturn the considered ethical judgement of Parliament.
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These concerns were conveyed in the following letter, with an accompanying full document, sent yesterday by DO NO HARM to all Federal MPs and Senators.

Dear…

You may shortly be faced with a decision whether or not to vote for a bill to remove the existing prohibition on human cloning which was passed by the Parliament, without a single dissenting vote, just four years ago.

Proponents of such a bill are relying substantially on the Lockhart Review which recommended that cloning should be permitted "to create and use human embryo clones for research, training and clinical applications".

In deciding how to vote it may be helpful for you to consider the following substantial flaws (Details with references are given in the document attached) in the Lockhart Report.

1. Half the members of the Lockhart Review were already on the record as supporting human cloning. The recommendations reflect their well-established personal views.

2. The Lockhart Review relied on fraudulent science. The six month period in which it conducted its inquiry (June-December 2005) coincided exactly with the period in which the whole world was conned into believing that Korean scientists had achieved major breakthroughs in the science of human cloning.

3. The Lockhart Review failed to disclose that over 80% of the submissions it received opposed any change to the prohibition on human cloning.

4. The Lockhart Review ignored completely the key published paper on Australians attitudes to cloning for research which found that 63% of Australians were not comfortable with scientists using cells created by cloning.

5. The Lockhart Review exceeded its brief by revisiting the fundamental ethical issue on whether it was right to create human embryos solely for research. This issue was decided decisively by the Parliament in 2002.

As Senator Kay Patterson said "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".

If we can be of any further help to you as you consider the cloning issue please don't hesitate to contact us.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Egan
Do No Harm: Australians for Ethical Stem Cell Research