AUSTRALIAN scientists have been given the go-ahead to extract stem cells from embryos, a process that destroys the tiny human being, after a private member’s bill on human cloning was passed by 82-62 votes in the House of Representatives in a conscience vote on December 6.
The national director of Do No Harm: Australians for Ethical Stem Cell Research, Dr David van Gend of Toowoomba, said the vote had been a victory for “con science” over conscience.
He said with the next review in four years, scientists would again be asking to create animal-human hybrid embryos, and will be asking to grow cloned embryos a little longer so they can extract more useful mature tissues.
“Science, which should serve our humanity, has made us all less human.”
The House of Representatives vote followed a narrow one-vote majority in the Senate in favour of the Prohibition of Human Cloning Bill for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Bill, introduced by Senator Kay Patterson.
A last ditch amendment, removing a provision in the bill allowing eggs to be harvested from late term aborted baby girls, was lost by 76 to 53 votes.
The legislation will allow the cloning of embryos for research through somatic cell nuclear transfer, commonly called therapeutic cloning.
Dr van Gend said moral damage had been done to society by approving a laboratory sub-class of human young created only for exploitation.
Director of the Catholic Church’s Queensland Bioethics Centre, Ray Campbell, said the passing of the bill was a sad day for Australians. He said Federal Parliament had taken Australia further down the spiral of lack of respect for human life.
