“TOP SCIENTISTS MISLEAD PUBLIC ON CLONING”

“Scientists are at it again: distorting the shape of stem cell science and obscuring the ethical issues at stake, in order to persuade politicians to permit further offences against the human embryo” said Dr David van Gend, spokesman for DO NO HARM, an association promoting stem cell research but opposing cloning.

UNBALANCED SCIENCE:

We expect better of Sir Gustav Nossal than the unbalanced science evident in today’s Australian newspaper: ‘Cures, not clones, will flow from medical technologies’ (13/7).

Nossal states that stem cells from cloned embryos will make it possible “to study the genesis of the disease in question and to test new pharmaceuticals as possible treatments”.

Perhaps, but that is exactly what Griffith University has already achieved with adult stem cells. Griffith has over forty lines of "patient-specific stem cells" (including from one of my Parkinsons patients) for genetic study and drug discovery. These adult stem cells are superior since they are easily obtained, ethically uncomplicated, and free of the genetic damage inherent in cloning.

Adult stem cells are now used in 70 human conditions; embryonic stem cells remain unusable and dangerous, but for Nossal embryos alone get a guernsey. That is not a truthful representation of stem cell science.

DISTORTED ETHICS:

Likewise today Prof Ian Fraser told ABC AM the cloned (SCNT) embryo has 'no potential to become a human being'. That is false. The embryo, by all scientific definitions, is the human being in its first 8 weeks of life. If implanted, like any embryo, it can take its chances of making it to birth. Dolly the sheep was a cloned (SCNT) embryo. A cloned human embryo is like any other embryo, and must not be created in order to be destroyed.

With human cloning, consider the clear statement by President Clinton's National Bioethics Advisory Commission, in its 1997 report Cloning Human Beings: "The Commission began its discussions fully recognizing that any effort in humans to transfer a somatic cell nucleus into an enucleated egg involves the creation of an embryo, with the apparent potential to be implanted in utero and developed to term."

CONCLUSION:

Griffith's Prof Alan Mackay-Sim told the Lockhart committee reviewing Australia’s cloning laws: "It is probable that such (adult) stem cell lines as these will render therapeutic cloning irrelevant and impractical."

If that view is correct, what possible justification do Nossal and Fraser have for pursuing cloning? How can they justify the deliberate creation of human embryos with their destruction in mind, when there are ethical ways of obtaining the scientific benefits?

Politicians at COAG tomorrow must not be misled by the unbalanced science and falsified ethical argument of these leading cloning lobbyists. Cloning remains both ethically wrong and scientifically redundant.

FOR COMMENT OR INTERVIEW:

Dr David van Gend, Spokesman, DO NO HARM: Australians for Ethical Medical Research

116 Russell St, Toowoomba 4350; 0417007066; 07-46329377; vangend@machousemedical.com.au