Senator Harradine puts his finger on the issue of scientific integrity in the debate over cloning - science misrepresented for purposes of political persuasion.

In the weeks since the Korean cloning experiments, here and overseas, a rhetorical battle has been waged to dehumanise the embryo created by cloning, and therefore make it fair game for destructive research. In Australia a professor of genetics has misled the public by saying, “the intermediate cellular products should not be called embryos, because they were not formed by the union of egg and sperm”. The national broadcaster regurgitated this nonsense, reassuring us that “the announcement from the South Korean scientists is a breakthrough without an ethical dilemma because the researchers did not use a fertilised egg to create the embryonic stem cells. So a human embryo was never actually created.”

As the Senator points out, an embryo is an embryo no matter how it is made. Cloning is simply one way of making an embryo; uniting egg and sperm is another. In the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act 2002 the definition of “embryo” clearly also includes those made “by any means other than by the fertilisation of a human egg by human sperm”, specifying cloning techniques as one such means.

In the US this abuse of biological truth has been so pervasive that the head of the President’s Council on Bioethics, Leon Kass, weighed in a couple of weeks back with a serious and professional plea for intellectual honesty: "If we are properly to evaluate the ethics of this research and where it might lead, we must call things by their right names and not disguise what is going on with euphemism or misleading nomenclature. The initial product of the (Korean scientists’) cloning technique is without doubt a living cloned human embryo”. (NY Times 29th May)

We can only echo his plea for scientific integrity in the Australian debate

I agree... a spade should be called a spade (or in this case, an embryo an embryo). But that's where the agreement ends. I don't think playing around with stem cells cheapens human life. I don't see why gaining a greater understanding of the very stuff of life, or the process (eg cloning and experimenting on human embryos) would suddenly make people think less of humanity, or treat people any differently. In fact, if anything the sheer complexity and wonder of it all could make us appreciate our humanity more. The potential that exists in this research can indeed enrich human life - growing new organs to replace old dying ones, curing diseases and whatnot (I may be incorrect here, I'm not intimately familiar with this field). I think what really cheapens life is being seen as pawns and commodities in the power games of politicians and businesspeople, and what really cheapens life is locking up indefinitely people fleeing oppression despite world condemnation and despite doctors saying that being locked up is making them sick and despite the fact that these are HUMANS we're talking about and you wouldn't want to be locked up if you were in their position, or giving tax cuts for the rich and welfare cuts for the poor, and destroying vast animal habitats and turning it into paper which is then used once and thrown into landfill, and putting God knows what in the atmosphere that will stay there doing God knows what for hundreds of years without any regard for the people who have to breath it, or clubbing the dog next door to death with a baseball bat because it barked at you, or throwing away enough food to feed the whole world while half the world starves. No, there are *plenty* of more important things to worry about than scientists playing with embryos, and quite frankly it's bloody ridiculous to say that it's fine to oppress, starve, poison, kill our fellow full-blown self-aware human beings, but it's not ok to research on these "little people" that don't know they exist.

I believe the real issue here is that when scientist perfect human cloning it will be a serious body blow to religion. Would a cloned human have a soul for instance. I say push ahead the good that can come from this research far out weight any potential bad.

I looked very hard in Senator Harradine's piece for a cogent reason why he is so against the practice of stem cell research, but couldn't find a single one. He speculates at length over whether one of the Korean ova donors had actually done so, whether such donations are voluntary or whether there are "subtle pressures", whether the procedure might be potentially life-threatening, and whether doctors should be obliged to warn their patients against it. His only contribution to the debate is a - highly equivocal and "non-binding" - United Nations declaration that was "negotiated by a working group" and passed with only 84 out of a possible 191 votes.

Perhaps others on this board can help me out. What exactly is the problem here? It seems to me that waffling on about abstract notions such as "human dignity" is just as much a semantic game as that with which those Korean researchers stand accused.

I agree wholeheartedly with you there. There is no problem (in my humble opinion, of course) with doing stem cell research on human embryos. If there was, the good Mr Harradine would have mentioned it/them. Simply saying "it cheapens human life" isn't good enough. With that being said, I would welcome anyone who agrees with Sen. Harradine to argue their point of view.

Pt 1
Pericles and Albert I’ll have a go. Being a secular humanist strong atheist ethical relativist , though I’m not saying either side is right or wrong but can see both of your positions, but I can talk about their viewpoint and whether each side is being consistent in their moral foundational beliefs.

Basically, I put it down where the two groups set their boundaries, defining and valuing -and all negative rights that go with it- a member of our social group that has equal moral consideration.

For the Pro-Life it is the human life not personhood that is the defining criteria for a membership in our group that has equal moral consideration.

For the Pro-Choice it is when personhood is reached along the developmental cycle of our species that sets membership in our group that has equal moral consideration.

The problem Pro-choice group has-notice I’m not using the potential human argument- that they think that this criteria is as arbitrary as race or sex, as even the zygote is a unique human life at the earliest stage of the human lifecycle. (this differentiates from even a skin cell or sex cell as they are part of an unique individual not a unique individual in itself which the pr-choice accepts as well)

Now given the Pro-choice have set personhood for thsoe we grant eqal moral consideration, we find inconsistencies in their position. Currently in Western societies who allow abortion for non-life threatening cases, they give personhood rights to infants, the mentally handicapped and some of the elderly who have age related cognitive problems, even tough they do not have a fully functioning ‘personhood’ or in some cases self-awareness. BTW more rights and better treatment is afforded to non-human animals than is granted to humans in the early stages of development.