The latest biannual report to Parliament
from the National Health and Medical Research Council Embryo Research Licensing
Committee was tabled on 30 March 2016. It covers the six month period to 31
August 2015.
So-called "excess" human embryos
Commonwealth legislation establishing
a national licensing scheme for research involving so-called “excess ART [artificial
reproductive technology] embryos” was passed in 2003, with all States and
Territories subsequently passing complementary legislation. “Excess ART embryos”
are human embryos initially created by the fertilisation of a human egg with a
human sperm in a laboratory with the intention of implanting the human embryo
in the body of a woman with the hope that it would develop through to live
birth.
The routine practice of
artificial reproductive technology in Australia involves:
- the chemical stimulation of the woman’s ovaries to produce several eggs at once;
- the fertilisation of all these eggs by human sperm;
- the implanting of no more than two of the resulting human embryos into the woman’s body, and
- the freezing of all the remaining human embryos.
However, not all frozen human embryos get
used before a woman decides to abandon further attempts at gestating live born
babies, either because:
- an earlier attempt is successful and she doesn’t want any more live born children;
- a relationship ends;
- she dies or becomes too ill to attempt pregnancy; or
- the process of ART becomes simply too stressful.
Growing stockpile of human embryos
As a consequence the stockpile of
human embryos in frozen storage continues to grow from year to year. In Western
Australia alone there were 20,323 human embryos in frozen storage as at 30 June
2015, up 955 (4.7%) from 30 June 2014.
Those who believe the human embryo
has no inherent value naturally see this vast stockpile as a source of raw
research material.
Additionally, human embryos fertilised
in the laboratory for ART are subject to various tests to identify those which
are considered unsuitable or undesirable for implanting in a woman’s body. This
includes those considered to have a lower chance of developing to live birth as
well as those identified on eugenic grounds as having, or more likely to have,
an undesirable characteristic, a genetic or chromosomal disability.
1279 "excess" human embryos destroyed for research
Since 2003 a total of 1,279 so-called "excess" human
embryos have been used and destroyed in Australia under a total of 14 licenses under
the national scheme.
Of these 725 human embryos were
used to create a total of 80 human embryonic stem cell lines. While the public
and parliamentary debate in 2003 centred around a claim that human embryonic stem
cells would be used to directly cure a range of diseases and injuries including
diabetes, spinal injury and Parkinson’s disease in reality as the most recent
report indicates these human embryonic stem cell lines are used for “basic
disease research and drug development projects”. (There has never been a clinical
trial using human embryonic stem cells in Australia and only five such trials
in the United States, with one cancelled part way through and the other four
still under way and yet to publish any results. All four trials under way are
only testing safety not efficacy at this point.)
Of the other 554 so-called “excess”
human embryos destroyed in licensed research, 149 were used in looking for new search
and destroy methods to test other human embryos to identify those that were
undesirable for “use” in an ART procedure. The remaining 405 were used in
refining the manufacturing processes used in ART, including 259 human embryos used in testing
a new freezing device.
Human cloning for destructive research
In 2007 the Commonwealth
legislation was amended to permit, under license, the deliberate creation of a
human embryo in the laboratory for the purpose of research. Under the new
legislation, human embryos could be created by three ways:
- somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) , which involves removing the nucleus of a human egg and replacing it with a nucleus from another human cell;
- parthenogenesis, which involves activating a unfertilised human egg to develop in the same way as a fertilised egg; or
- fertilising a human egg obtained from an aborted baby girl with human sperm.
No one has attempted the third
horrific approach but it remains lawful in Australia, except in Western Australia
where legislation to allow these three forms of creating human embryos for
destructive research was defeated in the Legislative Council.
Since 2007 a total of five
licenses have been issued to permit the creation of human embryos for destructive
research, three using SCNT and two using parthenogenesis.
A total of 104 human embryos have
been manufactured under these licenses using 683 human eggs. None of these
human embryos were cultivated past the 32 cell compact morula stage so no human
embryonic stem cells have been obtained in this way. The final licenses that
permitted the creation of human embryos expired on 16 December 2015. So after
an eight year experiment and the deliberate creation and destruction of 104
little human beings there is nothing to show.
Death of the innocent as the way to utopia?
Adding the two categories
together the death toll from the 2003 and 2007 legislation stands at 1,383.
However the seven current licenses already provide for up to 1,902 more “excess”
human embryos to be destroyed.
Each one of us was a human embryo
once.
James L. Sherley, a stem cell biologist and Harvard graduate
commenting on Harvard University’s push to be involved in human cloning wrote:
A defining feature of our humanity is that we also have the capacity to do the same for others whom we do not know. If the hands of members of the Harvard review board were sensitive enough, they could come to know human embryos better. They could feel that the smallest such embryos, like us, are warm to the touch, that they move as they grow, and they breathe just as surely as we do. (Boston Globe, 12 June 2006)
The willingness to destroy human embryos –
the littlest of us – in pursuit of research into more efficient baby making;
cures for diseases and more efficient eugenics is a sign of a society that has
failed the fundamental test posed by Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov to his brother
Alyosha:
Tell me yourself, I challenge you—answer.
Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of
making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it
was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature—that
baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance—and to found that edifice
on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those
conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth. (Brothers Karamazov, page 269)
Australian parliaments have
tragically passed laws pretending to bring us closer to utopia at the cost of taking the lives of several thousand human embryos. Like Alyosha
Karamazov we must reject the idea that those “for whom you are building it would agree to
accept their happiness on the foundation of the unexpiated blood of a little
victim … and accepting it would remain happy for ever”.
All those who seek to defend
human life should work for the repeal of the 2003 and 2007 legislation insofar as
it permits the destruction of even a single one of the littlest ones of us.
