Introduction - Therapeutic Cloning Forum

Australian Catholic University (ACU)

Melbourne Campus (St Patrick's), 2 November 2006

Tonight, five very distinguished presenters have debated serious moral and scientific issues, surrounding stem cells experimentation from the farming of human embryos. Our topic tonight is accompanied by deep convictions held by many, including the Australian Catholic Bishops, about the sanctity of human life. As a Lockhart committee member, who is Australia's most recent recipient of the Nobel Prize, reported recently: "those who gravitate to opposing sides in this debate hold ...... heartfelt positions". For the uncommitted there is an intellectually and philosophically very rough ride ahead.

The Lockhart Legislative Review had the task of adjudicating on issues dealing with the regulation of research on human embryos. Part of its brief was the request for scientists to be allowed to create cloned human embryos to pursue new remedies for disabled or diseased persons. The Review made 54 Recommendations including the legalizing of somatic cell nuclear transfer, otherwise known as therapeutic cloning.

Subsequent to the Lockhart Review there have been scientific claims offered to support its recommendations and other claims that highlight the potential benefits of adult stem cell research as opposed to the benefits of research from embryonic stem cells – and we have heard some of the core arguments tonight from our presenters. The end point of the core scientific (but not the moral) argument is the desired endorsement of embryonic stem cells as the building blocks of life that can be trained to repair or replace disease-affected tissues in the human body of de-habilitated or diseased persons who are suffering.

All presenters tonight clearly recognise that our topic is a scientific and a moral one. Science has an important and critical role to play in supplying us with the facts and the evidence it supplies clearly affects our interpretations of the issues. We have seen that evidence put before us tonight but stem cell questions also raise specific and important moral questions, and all of our scholars have focused on these tonight. Let me summarise the contrasts in my own way, benefiting I think from their collective arguments.

The community is seriously emotionally engaged with the issue of whether stem cell research from human embryos is necessary for scientific progress to occur. The moral issue is whether human life is destroyed in that progress, even though there is some debate among our moral scholars and theologians, including our philosophers, about when a judgment about the existence of human life can be made. For scientists, the circumstances of creation are being blurred with life's nascent potential. Moral scholars debate among themselves as to when human life becomes an issue, and where humanness is being violated in the reproductive cycle. When does the embryo gain its humanity and its soul – from conception or into its development? We are reminded of Pope John Paul's words that the "human being is to be respected and treated as a person from the moment of conception." For the Catholic religion, life should not be sacrificed for medical purposes, be it assisted suicide, euthanasia, abortion, the production of embryonic stem cells, or therapeutic cloning. Does it make a difference to the moral debate if stem cell experimentation is intended for embryos that will be destroyed, regardless? No one here tonight, including our participants, would wish to stop these kinds of discourses from continuing, or debate on these questions from evolving, but there are some who would wish to argue that human embryonic research and therapeutic cloning should be allowed and that the destruction of life is not the issue. Whatever are your conclusions I suggest to you that the preservation of life has to be the ultimate goal for respecting the sanctity of the human person.

Tonight, Australian Catholic University has exposed you to a range of scientific and moral perspectives and has presented you with five wonderful scholars to do that. Discussions like what we have just had are integral to our capacity to make informed decisions.

Tonight, we have heard opinions about the benefits of studying disease using affected cells, and opinions that the Lockhart Committee may have exceeded its brief. Media provocatively talks about these issues in terms of "Cells of Division, (and) Cells of Hope" but that kind of media polarity negates or clouds the very real moral significance of those issues to Society. There is an arguable moral imperative to alleviate suffering, but we also have to come to face the primary issue of when does benefiting one life merit the destruction of another? The debate tonight for me has pitted the moral imperative of alleviating suffering against the moral imperative to preserve life. Which is the primary one? These are large and complex questions and they must now preoccupy our politicians in their conscience vote.

Thank you for a most significant and important debate, and in particular, I would like to thank Frank Brennan, Bernadette Tobin, Jack Martin, Max Charlesworth and Gustav Nossal for their final contributions. In conclusion, I thank the audience for being here with us tonight to observe great scholarship at work. And special thanks to Fr Frank Brennan, our moderator for the evening.

Peter W Sheehan AO
Vice Chancellor
2 November 2006