Embryo pact on ‘slippery moral slope’

Sydney
14 April 2002

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Embryo pact on ‘slippery moral slope’

By Marilyn Kerjean and Johanna Bennett

Archbishop Pell has added his voice to the many religious and other voices urging Australia not to embrace stem-cell research using embryos.

He said the recent agreement between the state premiers and the Prime Minister allowing the use of embryonic stem cells “could have been much worse but it’s a victory of pragmatism over principles”.

“We are well launched on the slippery slope and there’s nothing entirely clear for many just what principles we can call upon to stop us sliding further” down the moral slope, said the archbishop.

He was speaking at St Mary’s Cathedral last week, before the Mass in honour of St Thérèse of Lisieux.

The archbishop said he was concerned that once the early frontiers were abandoned it would become easier “to do the sorts of things that most civilised people reject”.

He has added his voice to other voices – not all of them religious – calling for stem-cell research to limit itself to using only adult stem cells.

Archbishop Pell is a sig natory – along with other religious and community leaders and scientists – to a statement calling on the Prime Minister and Premiers to support adult stem-cell research, but strongly rejecting the use of IVF embryos for research.

Dr Warwick Neville, research fellow for the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, says the option of using stem cells extracted from adult tissue has not received due attention “at all” in the current debate.

The bishops are pleased that the proposed federal legislation will ban all human embryonic cloning, he says.

But go-ahead for research using surplus IVF embryos “represents a very serious rupture of longstanding medical research codes such as the Nuremberg Code and the Declaration of Helsinki”.

One class of the human family is now denied protection, he said. “It’s a very dangerous precedent.”

Accountability and transparency in each instance of embryo use in research need to be at the forefront of any legislation, says Dr Neville.

Francis Sullivan, head of Catholic Health Australia, also called for a ban on embryonic stem-cell research.

“Embryonic stem cells are available in quantity from samples of umbilical cord blood, which is banked specifically for research of the type proposed,” he argued.

And Fr Anthony Fisher OP, bioethics spokesman for the Melbourne Archdiocese, said that a process which creates surplus human embryos is flawed in the first place.

Liberal Senator Guy Barnett will move to stop the Federal Government with amending legislation or a private member’s bill to prohibit experimentation, exploitation and research on human embryos.

“I have three beautiful girls,” he said. “I have diabetes and so they have an increased likelihood of developing diabetes.

“My father died of motor neurone disease. But I cannot support the use of embryos for research.”

Under the federal-state agreement, surplus embryos from IVF treatment will be available for research into the viability of stem cells for treatment of conditions such as juvenile diabetes and Parkinson’s disease, but only with the parents’ consent.

Creating embryos for research and therapeutic cloning will be banned.

The legislation will be up for review in three years and there is a fear these restrictions may be weakened then.