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Australians for Ethical Stem Cell Research (AESCR),  a national association of doctors and scientists, says the Federal  Government has morally damaged Australian society by voting in the House of Representatives to overturn the ban on  cloning, destructive experiments on embryos and the extraction of eggs from aborted female babies. 

AESCR criticized MPs who spoke of the anguish of watching loved ones suffer from untreatable diseases as they debated the stem cell issue.  “Like superstitious peasants they believed the  witchdoctors who held out hope of miracle cures from cloning,’’ said AESCR national director Dr David van Gend.   “The credulity of these MPs was touching and pitiful - any disease suffered by any relative became reason enough for them to declare they ‘would not stand in the way of a cure’. The moral damage to society has now been done by approving a laboratory subclass of human young, manufactured  only for exploitation.’’ 

Dr van Gend predicted that with the next review of the legislation in four years time, scientists would ask to manufacture animal-human hybrids and to grow cloned embryos for longer to extract more mature tissues.  “This was a vote for hype and inhumanity - for an immoral and unnecessary science that will manufacture new human lives solely for exploitation.’’  

Already we are sliding down this slippery slope.     ReNeuron, a British company, is  applying to the US Food and Drug Administration to transplant stem cells made from human fetuses  into the brains of stroke patients. John Smeaton,  national director,  Society for the Protection of the Unborn  Child,  said:   “Naturally, it’s important to do everything possible to help stroke patients, but babies should not be killed and then plundered for the use of medical science. It is tragic and offensive that aborted babies  should be used in this way. Abortion is wrong and is not made any better by using the dead baby as a source of experimental transplant material. Such research is quite unethical and immoral because it ignores the unborn baby’s right to life.” 

While our  feminist  opponents are quick to quote UN Treaties and Conventions in support of their permissive  agendas, they have ignored the fact that Australia has  breached its UN obligations by lifting the ban on human cloning.  The General Assembly of the UN adopted a Declaration on Human Cloning in 2005 “by which Member States were called on to adopt all measures necessary to prohibit all forms of human cloning in as much as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life.  The UN adopted this recommendation by a vote of 84 in favour to 34 against.  Australia voted in favour of the recommendation. Endeavour Forum Inc. representatives were at the UN when this Declaration was adopted. 

By further terms of the Declaration, Member States were also called on “to protect adequately human life in the application of life sciences, to prohibit the application of genetic engineering techniques that may be contrary to human dignity, to prevent the exploitation of women in the application of life sciences and to adopt and implement national legislation in that connection”.

The unlovely cabal of feminist Senators who have instigated recent anti-life legislation in Federal Parliament are usually very vocal in reminding Australia of its international human rights obligations.  They have been seduced by the lies of egotistical scientists into believing that embryonic stem cells will provide cures for  diseases.  The tragedy is that the destructive legislation they promoted will draw money and scientific resources away from adult stem cells which ARE producing treatments.  Just in the past few months, adult stem cells have been used to grow liver and breast tissue, to treat muscular dystrophy in dogs (trials on children suffering from Duchenne  muscular dystrophy could begin within two years), and to treat blindness in mice.  The list goes on - as do the lies from scientists who know better but are on a spree of  unnecessary killing  of tiny human lives. 

Our thanks to all those who wrote and lobbied Senators and MHRs against Patterson’s cursed Bill, and to those ethical parliamentarians who voted against it.