Pro-cloning activists hide nasty truth

The cloning vote is expected in the House of Reps this week. How is this for a story from News Limited? Maybe some MPs may reconsider their vote. I hope so, but am not holding my breath.

Pro-cloning activists hide nasty truth

A FINAL vote about human cloning is looming as the debate begins in the House of Representatives this week.

Hidden among the promises of cures and hype about a biotech boom is the assumption that thousands of women will merrily undergo hazardous egg harvesting procedures to hand over their eggs to the cloners.

Foreshadowing an egg shortage, Loane Skene, the acting chairwoman of the Lockhart committee, has suggested that eggs could be removed from women after their death and used to produce cloned embryos for research. Dead women would be raw material for cloning research and become mothers to embryos, to be exploited in turn, in the name of research, scientific kudos and corporate profit.

If that doesn't already take the yuk factor to a new level, it's now emerging that senator Kay Patterson, the sponsor of the cloning bill, wants researchers to be able to help themselves to eggs from dead female fetuses as well.

During the Senate committee inquiry into cloning, Ms Patterson was asked what the public would think of her Bill's proposal to allow the harvesting of eggs from aborted female fetuses to make embryos for research. She wouldn't answer.

Likewise, when confronted with this question on ABC radio, the Australian Stem Cell Centre's Stephen Livesey was evasive: "That's sort of science fiction. I think we should stick to the facts." Mr Livesey was told the Bill's provision to create embryos using the immature eggs of aborted female fetuses had been confirmed by former members of the Lockhart committee. "Misrepresentation," he claimed.

It's time we faced the facts. Although Ms Patterson, Mr Livesey and other pro-cloning activists don't want to admit it, the Bill passed in the Senate by one vote would turn aborted female fetuses into the mothers of embryos that themselves would be destroyed in research. The Bill allows scientists to "create human embryos using precursor cells from a human embryo or a human fetus, and use such embryos". As defined in the existing legislation "precursor cell means a cell that has the potential to develop into a human egg (ovum) or human sperm".

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