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