Anglicans oppose human cloning amendments

Anglican Church Expresses Opposition to Human Cloning and Other Prohibited Practices Amendment Bill

The Business Paper for Tuesday 5th June for the NSW Legislative Assembly contains at No. 5 in the Order of Business, a resumption of debate on the "Human Cloning and Other Prohibited Practices Amendment Bill".

The Anglican Church, both in the Diocese of Sydney and from the seven Anglican Dioceses of New South Wales have expressed opposition to this Bill and have called on Parliamentary representatives not to vote in favour of the Bill.

The Social Issues Executive of the Diocese of Sydney, a body that advises Archbishop Peter Jensen and the Sydney Diocesan Standing Committee, has circulated a letter to all State MPs asking them not to vote in favour of the Bill.

The text of the Social Issues Executive letter runs as follows:

Dear XXX MP,

We write to you in reference to the imminent vote on the Human Cloning and Other Prohibited Practices Amendment Bill 2007. We respectfully ask you to seriously consider this bill and its schedules, and urge you not to vote for the passage of this bill through the New South Wales State Parliament.

As you are aware this is a series of complex amendments to the Human and Other Prohibited Practices Act 2003. These amendments:

· evade serious and ongoing moral concerns within the community about the creation and destruction of human embryos in medical research. This evasion largely arises due to the initial Lockhardt review (on which these amendments are based), specifically excluding consideration of this area;

· further evade these moral concerns by arbitrarily redefining the "embryo' and the "clone' (Schedule 1, Section 4 Definitions);

· promote the intentional creation and destruction of early human life for the purposes of medical research;

· are premised on a faulty assumption that medical research should proceed independent of any wider consideration other than what it "hopes' to achieve.

The major impetus for these changes to the existing legislation comes from a good desire for cures to many serious diseases. This desire has been ignited into hope, with the declaration of many proponents that embryonic stem cells will provide these cures. Are we in a position to accept these declarations and then pass a Bill which dismisses the overall ethical questions surrounding this type of research? Please consider the following points:

1. Those who have been doing this research overseas for a number of years (and with substantial budgets) have failed to achieve the promises made for cures (or even advances).

2. Adult Stem cell research (even with relatively little funding) continues to deliver advances.

3. Even since the Federal Parliament passed its legislation last year, promising new avenues of research have been developed that would achieve the same potential results but without the need for destructive embryo research.

On a broader social level, to accept this Amendment Bill will further damage our already difficult relationship with early human life. It will enshrine in law the corrupt view that early human life is our property, for our use, and does so by claiming that the embryos used are not morally significant or important.

We realise that as member of our state Parliament you are often asked to make significant decisions, like this one, for the good of NSW and its people. We also recognise that you are probably under a considerable pressure (explicit or implicit) from those putting the argument that "medical research must be allowed to proceed, for the sake of the sick and suffering.' But at the core of the practice of medicine is the fundamental tenet that good medicine will never harm one in order to heal another, let alone create an embryonic human being only to destroy it for some perceived or possible benefit in the future. We therefore ask you to vote against the Bill.

You may have already carefully considered and rejected the points we and others have raised, and decided to vote in favour of the Bill. If that is the case we would like to highlight the portions of the Bill that recognise that there is an ethical bite to this debate. There is a line that our society should not cross. As we have already stated we believe this Bill crosses the line and indeed seeks to simply redraw it. The following prohibitions recognise that society does think about these things and just because medical research claims a potential benefit from a practice, it does not necessarily make it acceptable to proceed.

Such things as:

· prohibition of embryo harvesting from mothers;

· prohibition of the creation of chimeric embryo;

· prohibition of placing human embryos in animals;

· prohibition of making inheritable alterations to a human genome, and

· prohibition of commercial trading in human eggs, sperm and human embryos.

These are all positive aspects to be maintained in the current legislation. And they should give us pause to ask a few questions. Why is the line here? Is this where the people of NSW think the line should be?

With the changes proposed in this Bill, Parliament will need to carefully consider how these prohibitions and practices will be monitored and controlled. We particularly have concerns about the growth in the demand for human oocytes (eggs) that would inevitably follow the Bill. With the growing demand, there would also be the potential for an illicit trade in human eggs and the potential for women to be exploited. It is good that penalties have been put in place regarding such trade, but will the Parliament resource the monitoring and policing of ART providers and Medical research facilities to ensure that they adhere to the legislation? The experience of such legislation overseas has already shown the issues that can arise in this area. Having opened up the possibility of abuse we should sensibly expect that some will exploit this situation.

We urge you to consider this piece of legislation carefully and to vote against it. If you would like to discuss any of the points we have raised I would be happy to speak with you and can be contacted on either of the numbers below.

Dr Andrew Ford BSc(Hons), BD, PhD
On behalf of the Social Issues Executive
Anglican Church Diocese of Sydney
1 King St, Newtown NSW 2042
Ph: 9577 9956 (Social Issues Researcher) OR 9577 9814 (Dr Andrew Ford).

Also, at the recent meeting (30th May " 2nd June) of the New South Wales Provincial Synod of the Anglican Church, a body that is made up of representatives of all seven Anglican NSW Dioceses, the following resolution was passed.

"Therapeutic cloning and related research

Synod -

a) recognises that those who undertake medical research are striving to reduce human suffering;

b) expresses its opposition to the legislation which we understand is soon to be introduced into the NSW Parliament, that would allow the practice of therapeutic cloning and relax current restrictions on research involving human embryos;

c) while recognising the need for research to find cures or prevent the suffering caused by disease, believes the creation of a human life, either by fertilisation or by any other means of creation (for example, somatic cell nuclear transfer - also known as therapeutic cloning) for the purposes of destroying that life in research fails to recognise the value and purpose God assigns to human life, even in its earliest stages;

d) encourages Christians to write to their representatives in the NSW Parliament expressing these views prior to the parliamentary debate; and

e) calls on the Parliament to uphold the current legal ban on human cloning."

CONTACT:

Margaret Rodgers 0411 692 499
Lisa Watts 9577 9956