CATHOLIC Health Australia (CHA) has denounced the Senate’s conscience vote to allow human cloning, saying it effectively enshrines a precedent that human life is expendable.
The narrow 34-32 vote in the Senate favoured relaxing the ban on human cloning.
The Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Bill 2006, introduced by Liberal Senator Kay Patterson, will now go before the House of Representatives for a conscience vote at the end of this month.
“By permitting the cloning of human embryos the Senate has given approval to the deliberate destruction of innocent human life,” CHA chief executive officer Francis Sullivan said.
Last minute amendments to the bill in the Senate, proposed by the Australian Democrats, increased from 10 to 15 years the prison sentence for flouting safeguards designed to prevent abuse of embryonic cloning.
Another amendment prevented researchers from obtaining licences for creating human-animal hybrid embryos.
Archbishop Doyle said the Senate result was disappointing and there was a real prospect, if the bill became law, that society could be heading down a very dangerous path.
Nationals Senate Leader, Queensland Senator Ron Boswell, said if the bill was passed in the House of Representatives no law within Australia would prevent cloning technology from being shipped overseas to clone a human being.
Fellow Queensland Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce, another Catholic who voted against the bill, said it was only a matter of time before emotional pressure was again put on politicians to again lower the ethical bar in search of potential cures.
