In 2006, Federal Parliament voted to allow the cloning of human embryos for research purposes. But before this can take effect, the states have to pass similar legislation to allow cloning in their backyard.
SA pollies are the last to decide and a vote is due soon.
Encouragingly, the WA Parliament recently voted against cloning, retaining its current laws which ban the cloning and killing of human embryos. This was a very impressive move by the WA Parliament, which recognised the fact that there are ethical scientific alternatives to cloning. WA politicians took account of recently published research (detailed below) which shows more clearly than ever before that cloning is unnecessary.
If only other states had taken the same ethical stance. Every state used to have laws banning human cloning, which dated back to 2002 when all State and Federal pollies voted unanimously to say cloning was wrong. When the Federal Parliament back-flipped, the States began to toe the line. SA still has to vote, but NSW, ACT, Tas, Qld, Vic have all decided to allow this unethical practice.
The new cloning laws allow the creation of human embryos solely for research – living cloned human embryos which could, like Dolly the Sheep, be born as a baby, but are destined only for destructive experimentation. The laws also allow the use of aborted female foetuses as a source of eggs for cloning. In other words, making an aborted baby girl the ‘mother’ of an embryo which will then be destroyed in research! This is inhuman legislation based on misguided science.
Supposedly, this is 'therapeutic' cloning. If only! It is not therapeutic for the embryo which is destroyed when its stem cells are harvested. Neither is it very therapeutic for people with disabilities or diseases - so far all treatments have come from adult stem cell research, not from embryos.
Despite the passage of cloning laws in NSW, Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania, we urge readers in SA to use this site to urge their politicians to send a strong message that human life should not be messed with for stem cell experiments. Remind them that WA has not allowed this practice and they don't need to either.
Ethical research using adult stem cells has been described as a "galloping horse", already producing cures and treatments while embryo stem cell research has produced nothing.
In fact, prominent international cloners have now walked away from this field following yet another exciting scientific breakthrough in November 2007 where adult skin cells were re-programmed into extremely versatile stem cells.
Dolly the Sheep cloner professor Ian Wilmut from Edinburgh University abandoned human embryo cloning when he heard about the November breakthrough by Japanese and American scientists. Click here to read a news report about Wilmut’s change of heart.
Please ask your SA state politicians not to change their laws, which ban human cloning. Why divert precious research dollars to a field that is unethical and unnecessary?
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