Posted 5-8-08

Vote Against Embryonic Cloning Seen as Sign of Shifting Debate

By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com International Editor

(CNSNews.com) - In what could signal a further shift in the global stem cell debate, lawmakers in an Australia state have rejected legislation allow the cloning of human embryos for research purposes.

This week's vote in the Western Australia capital, Perth, is believed to be one of the first times the embryonic cloning issue has been considered by a legislature anywhere in the world since reports of a major research breakthrough last November prompted new questions about the need to use embryos at all.

The issue will be under discussion on Capitol Hill again on Thursday, when a health subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee holds a hearing chaired by Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), a strong supporter of embryonic stem cell research.

The upper house of the Western Australia parliament on Tuesday night voted down a bill presented by the Labor government that would have brought the state into line with federal legislation passed in late 2006 that lifted a ban on "therapeutic cloning" or somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) - the cloning of early-stage human embryos for stem cells that may someday be used to treat degenerative diseases.

Several other Australian states earlier passed similar bills, but what differed in this case was that Western Australia's Legislative Council considered the measure in the light of advances that have taken the controversial debate in a new direction.

Scientists in Japan and U.S. last November reported the successful "direct reprogramming" of human adult skin cells into cells that behave like embryonic cells -- thus having the same pluripotency, or potential to develop into any type of cell. Like stem cells from embryos cloned from a patient's genetic material, the newly discovered "induced pluripotent stem" (iPS) cells are also genetically identical to the patient whose skin cells were originally used.

But because the iPS cells do not derive from embryos, the direct reprogramming method avoids the ethical dilemmas surrounding the manipulation and destruction of human embryos.

The discovery was described as "revolutionary," and many opponents of embryonic stem cell research expressed the hope it would further erode and ultimately end arguments in favor of using embryos. (President Bush in his 2008 State of the Union address said the iPS breakthrough had "the potential to move us beyond the divisive debates of the past by extending the frontiers of medicine without the destruction of human life.")

Several of the Western Australia lawmakers who opposed the bill, which passed in the state's lower house last September, said it had been rendered out-of-date because of the latest advances. At least five government members reportedly voted against the bill.

'Unethical and unnecessary'

An organization called Australians for Ethical Stem Cell Research praised the outcome, saying those who voted against the bill had decided "that there is no point enacting laws for a science that is now dead and gone."

"They have understood that the world of stem cell science has so radically changed since November 2007, providing such a magnificent and ethical alternative to cloning, that there is no longer any compelling argument for cloning, and this blighted science can be left to wither on the vine," said the group's national director, Dr. David van Gend.

He noted that some of the world's leaders in the cloning field, including Ian Wilmut, creator of the world's first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep, had abandoned cloning in favor of the direct reprogramming method.

Seeing Wilmut and others "walk away from cloning," the Western Australia lawmakers had "rightly judged that there was no point writing laws to support a superseded science."

Van Gend urged other Australian governments to now repeal their comparable legislation.

The Australian Christian Lobby also welcomed the decision, saying the Western Australia lawmakers were the first in the country "to reject pressure to line up with national cloning laws."

"Human embryo cloning has always been wrong, as human life should not be
arbitrarily created and destroyed, no matter how noble the supposed goal might be," said the lobby's Western Australia director, Michelle Pearse.

"Scientific developments have now shown that this process is also unnecessary, meaning there was no good reason to pursue it," she said.

But the state's health minister, Jim McGinty, decried the outcome, saying Western Australia was now "out of step" with the rest of Australia.

"Conservative forces in the upper house ... have denied the people of Western Australia world class medical research and denied people with life threatening medical conditions potential cures," he said.

Prof. Peter Klinken of the Western Australia Institute for Medical Research challenged the view that the direct reprogramming method rendered embryonic cloning irrelevant.

"All stem cell research has pluses and minuses and we need to explore all of them and not close off any doors," he said.

The stance echoes the one taken by the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research in the U.S., a leading campaigner for embryonic stem cell research, which says limiting the research as favored by Bush "would tie the hands of scientists and halt life-saving research and place on hold the search for cures."

Bush in July 2006 and again in June 2007 vetoed legislation that aimed to expand federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.