Chapter 3 - Ethical issues
Introduction
3.1
The two main sets of ethical
issues posed by the Bill before the Senate concern, first, the ethics of human
cloning and, second, the ethics of destructive research on human embryos.
3.2
The Bill prohibits both
reproductive and so-called therapeutic cloning, and makes it an offence to
import a human embryo clone into Australia. The Bill provides for destructive
research on human embryos under certain specified circumstances.
3.3
Evidence before the Committee
suggests that there is near unanimous support for the prohibition on
reproductive cloning, and very strong support for a prohibition or at least a
moratorium on ‘therapeutic’ cloning.[144]
This support is grounded in a strong consensus that such practices are
‘ethically unacceptable’.[145]
3.4
That consensus in turn is based
on both direct consequentialist considerations, such as the risk of creating
abnormal or prematurely aged embryos or individuals, and on broader concerns
such as the threat to concepts of identity and kinship, fear of eugenics,
commodification of children and the implications for genetic diversity.[146]
3.5
There was almost no ethical
disagreement expressed in evidence on the prohibition of human cloning. Concern
was expressed about the legitimacy of the distinction drawn between
reproductive and so-called ‘therapeutic’ cloning, and was discussed in the
previous chapter.
3.6
There was, however, extensive
debate about the ethical justifiability of the proposal that destructive
research on human embryos be allowed to proceed. In what follows, the Committee
outlines the main lines of ethical argument both for and against that research.
3.7
It should be emphasised that
the Committee’s aim in this discussion is not to reach a definitive view on the
ethical questions raised by the proposed research. It does, however, hope to
contribute to a broadened or deepened understanding of the implications of the
moral issues at stake.
3.8
To this end, the Committee
attempts not simply to describe the different arguments put in evidence, but to
analyse some of the implications of those arguments and to suggest what further
questions may be raised by them.
Structure of argumentation
3.9
There are a range of arguments
put for and against the ethical justifiability of permitting destructive
research on human embryos. It will assist in clarifying the nature and status
of these arguments, if some preliminary attention is given to their
relationship with one another.
3.10
Imagine a proposal to perform
destructive experimentation on an adult or child. Even if such experimentation
promised great medical benefit, it would generate very little ethical debate.
That is because for almost no one is it an open question as to whether it is
morally acceptable to destroy an individual person for the sake of benefit to
others.[147]
3.11
The heart of the ethical debate
before the Committee is the question of whether or not the embryo enjoys the
same moral status as an adult or child, and hence whether it is an open
question that it may be morally acceptable to destroy a human embryo for the
sake of benefit to others.
3.12
For those who think that the
human embryo is morally equivalent to an adult or child, then acknowledging its
moral status exhausts the question (in the negative) of whether it may be
destroyed. Further reasons, either moral or scientific, may be adduced in
support of the view that such experimentation is unacceptable, but these
further reasons are not the decisive factors in the conclusion reached.
3.13
For those who think, however,
that the human embryo under 14 days does not enjoy precisely the same moral
status as an adult or child, then the nature of any further reasons for
supporting or objecting to the practice becomes decisive.
Moral status of the human embryo
3.14
There are three broad ways in
which the moral status of the human embryo may be considered. The Committee
will consider how these views informed the evidence it received concerning the
ethical justifiability of destructive research on human embryos.
3.15
The three views of the moral
status of the embryo are that it possesses:
-
the same moral status as an adult human being;[148] or
-
limited or different moral status compared with
an adult human being.
No moral status
3.16
Very few argue that the human
embryo has no moral status at all. Where it is argued, it often depends upon
the idea that human moral status depends upon the properties of sentience or
rationality.
3.17
For example, the Humanist
Society of Victoria stated that:
We do not regard early zygotes as humans: they lack the
essential property of sentience, and in vivo, some 50% of these fertilised ova
fail to implant and are discharged from the womb.[149]
3.18
This kind of argument was also
made by Australian ethicist Peter Singer in evidence to the Senate Select
Committee on Human Embryo Experimentation and more recently by Julian Savulescu,
Professor of Applied Ethics, Oxford University, who has written:
If we are fundamentally conscious minds, we do not begin to
exist at least until the structures are present which could support
consciousness. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologist’s Working
Party produced a report on Fetal Awareness in 1997. It concluded that the
structural development for ability to be conscious of pain is not present in
the fetus before 26 weeks. Thus, the fetus does not achieve moral status before
26 weeks.[150]
3.19
As part of his argument that
‘we’ are fundamentally identified with our minds or that what really matters
about us is consciousness, Professor Savulescu discusses the case of Tony
Bland, a young man rendered permanently unconscious by the Hillsborough
football disaster. Professor Savulescu notes that what justified the decision
to withdraw artificial means of life-support from Tony Bland was that the fact
of his permanent unconsciousness left him with ‘no interest in remaining
alive’.[151] By analogy, then,
Professor Savulescu’s argument is that an embryo which lacks consciousness
likewise lacks any interest in remaining alive.
3.20
It is noteworthy, however, that
although Professor Savulescu considers that Tony Bland’s condition justifies
the withdrawal of ‘extraordinary’ means to keep him alive, he does not propose
that it licenses us to perform destructive experiments on him. In other words,
a difficulty with this kind of argument is that it is seemingly too broad. It
would mean, for example, that human beings who are comatose or severely
mentally impaired would also lack moral status, and so would be available for
destructive medical experimentation.
3.21
It seems then that absence of
consciousness or sentience is not, by itself, sufficient to justify the
withdrawal of any form of moral
consideration for particular human beings.
3.22
Using the same analogy, then, a
number of submissions to the Committee drew a moral distinction between the
withdrawal of ‘life support’ from frozen embryos and destructive
experimentation upon them.[152]
3.23
They argued, in other words,
that there was a serious moral difference between allowing the embryos to ‘die’
or ‘succumb’, and destroying them by extracting their stem cells. For that
reason, they maintained that the fact that the ‘excess’ embryos at issue ‘are
going to die anyway’ is irrelevant to the argument.
3.24
For example, the St Vincent’s
Hospital, Sydney, questioned the claim that given the embryos are destined for
destruction it is not unreasonable to use them for research:
Of course it is true that in each case the embryo will end up
dead. But just as there is a significant difference between the death of a
person who is deliberately killed and the death of someone who dies from
natural causes, so there is a significant difference between an embryo’s being
deliberately dismembered and its dying naturally. The embryos to be
experimented upon will most certainly die by dismemberment. Dismembering them,
rather than allowing them to succumb unviolated, merely ‘ adds insult to
injury’.[153]
3.25
Mr Raymond Campbell from the
Queensland Bioethics Centre described the difference between three different
actions in relation to the nature of the decision on how to treat the human
embryo:
...no matter what you are going to do with the embryo you are
going to remove it [from the freezer]. If you are going to implant it, you are
going to remove it from the freezer, allow it to thaw and allow it to begin to
develop and then implant it. If you are going to use it for embryonic stem cell
research, you are going to remove it from the freezer, allow it to thaw and
allow it to develop-because they are not at the stage of having the cells that
they are wanted for as stem cells, so they are allowed to develop further-and
then the stem cells are harvested, destroying the embryo. If you are going to
allow it to succumb, it is the same action. You remove the embryo from the
freezer, put it back in the environment and it will begin to develop again.
Then it will reach a stage where it can no longer survive in that environment
and it will die if it is not implanted. I would suggest that they are three
very different kinds of actions.[154]
3.26
The Committee notes that use of
the analogy between unconscious embryos and comatose human beings suggests the
following line of thought. Different acts are morally charged in different
ways. The withdrawal of artificial life support from a human entity is one kind
of morally charged act; destructive experimentation of a human entity is
another kind of morally charged act. It is possible that the absence of the
properties of consciousness or sentience may function to justify the first act,
but not the second.
3.27
Some of the points that arise
for consideration from this discussion then seem to be as follows:
-
the enjoyment of consciousness is not the sole
criterion upon which moral consideration of other human beings seems to be
warranted;
-
an analogy may be drawn between human embryos
and comatose human beings insofar as they lack consciousness; and
-
there is a question as to whether there are
other similarities or differences between human embryos and adult human beings
which mean that this analogy, by itself, is insufficient to justify equality of
consideration.
Same moral status as an adult human
being
3.28
A large number of submissions
to the inquiry expressed the view that the human embryo possesses the same
moral status as an adult human being, and thus that destructive research
involving embryos is unacceptable.[155]
3.29
There are two basic stages in
the argument that supports this view. The first stage involves establishing the
biological ‘fact’ that new human life commences at fertilisation. The second
stage involves being able to bring this biologically related entity into full
moral fellowship with ‘us’.
Commencement of human life
3.30
There is in fact little
disagreement that the embryo is a human life and that its life commences at
fertilisation. The difficulties arise in specifying exactly in what sense it is
to be considered ‘a life’, and hence what significance should be attached to
it.
3.31
In its discussion of the biological
facts of the matter, the Senate Select Committee on the Human Embryo
Experimentation Bill 1985 stated that:
Two universally accepted attributes are that the fertilised ovum
has ‘life’ and that it is genetically human (ie. it is composed of genetic material
entirely from the species homo sapiens).
It is also generally agreed that it is an entity (a centrally organised unit
which has a purposeful independent function as opposed to an organ or tissues).
It also has developmental potential (whether that may progress to little more
than cleavage, or to birth and on to subsequent adulthood).[156]
3.32
Various submissions to the
inquiry appealed to recent work in embryology to support the claim that a
recognisably distinct and individual human life commences the moment the sperm
enters the egg. For example, the Southern Cross Bioethics Institute stated
that:
Microscopic evidence and chemical changes to the egg and sperm
mark the entry as decisive. No other defining moment can be identified as the
start...From fertilisation onwards the self-organising behaviour of the embryo is
evident, and is quite unlike ordinary processes of cellular replication by
which cells multiply. The union of pronuclei - DNA already premixed as it were
by meiosis during the formation of egg and sperm - leads to a new and unique
amalgamation with a new composition unlike any other.[157]
3.33
The Caroline Chisholm Centre
for Health Ethics submitted that:
The genetic individuality or identity of the adult is
practically the same as that of the embryo, who possesses the actual potential
to develop and grow into an adult, given a suitable uterine environment. The
zygote and the resulting adult are the same living being. The zygote organises
itself into a multicellular embryo, fetus, infant, child and adult without
ceasing to be the one and same living human individual.[158]
3.34
The arguments in these
submissions seem to assume that, having established that the embryo is a
distinct human entity from fertilisation, it follows immediately that this
entity is ‘owed a duty of unconditioned moral respect’.[159]
3.35
However, the Committee notes
that these views concerning the commencement of human life at fertilisation
were accepted even by scientists who support some form of destructive research
on embryos.
3.36
For example, Professor John
White, Spokesperson on Human Cloning, Australian Academy of Science, agreed
that a ‘human entity’ comes into existence with fertilisation. When, however,
he was asked to agree that therefore this embryo was a ‘human being’, Professor
White responded as follows:
I am not sure I understand that declension. I said ‘entity’
because the view that I and many other people would take is that, in embryology
and in the development of the human person - and, indeed, even theologically,
in the implantation of a soul - it might well be a gradual process.[160]
3.37
In explaining his preference
for the term ‘entity’, Professor White noted that:
There are many overtones to the word ‘being’ that I would build
into it, and perhaps you would build different ones in...But I am quite happy to
agree to ‘entity’.[161]
3.38
In essence, Professor White’s
distinction points to the fact that, although it may be relatively
uncontroversial to identify the embryo as biologically human, that
identification does not necessarily settle the question of the sense in which
the embryo shares our humanity and hence of the significance to be attributed
to it.
Shared humanity?
3.39
Arguments were presented to the
Committee both for and against the view that the embryo shares our humanity in
the morally relevant sense.
3.40
The view that the early embryo
is not yet fully our moral fellow is often supported with reference to
biologically significant ‘marker’ events in embryonic development.
3.41
There are four factors, in
particular, which are often cited as grounds for authorising experimentation on
the embryo up until 14 days. They are:
3.42
Briefly, up until the 16-32
cell stage the individual cells of the embryo each have the potential, if
placed in the right environment, to develop into separate individuals.[162] This capacity is referred to as the
‘totipotency’ of the cells. Also during the first two weeks of pregnancy, twins
can be formed either as a result of the successful implantation of two
fertilised eggs or as a result of the splitting of the single embryo.[163]
3.43
‘Natural embryo loss’ refers to
the fact that it is estimated that up to half of all naturally formed embryos
‘fail before the full establishment of pregnancy’. The House of Representatives
report on human cloning noted that:
The reasons for these failures are obscure and almost impossible
to study in the human, but are thought to be due to genetic abnormalities in
the embryo (about 30%), inadequate synchrony or development of hormonal signals
between the embryo and the mother (about 30%), with the remainder due to
unexplained causes.[164]
3.44
Finally, the ‘primitive streak’
refers to the alignment of cells that is formed at about the fourteenth day and
that will go on to become the central nervous system. According to Professor
White, that is the point ‘where a discernible, bilateral symmetry is apparent
in the early embryo in the cluster of cells - the first sign of a nervous
system and of right-handedness and left-handedness’.[165]
3.45
In general terms, the argument
for the significance of these biological features of the early embryo for the
attribution of moral status is that it is only by the fourteenth day that we
can be sure that the embryo is an identifiable individual, and will not be
divided or naturally discarded.
3.46
Various objections are raised
against this line of argument. In particular, the problem identified is that,
given the essentially developmental nature of embryonic life, the insertion of
a concrete point at which we suddenly begin to take that life morally seriously
seems arbitrary.
3.47
The proposal that embryo
experimentation should be allowed up until the fourteenth day was made by the
Warnock Committee in the United Kingdom in 1984. Professor White acknowledged
that ‘in some sense’ this ‘might be arbitrary’ and remarked that ‘nevertheless
a date has been fixed and a pragmatic arrangement for the treatment of early
embryos has been arrived at both in law and in practice’.[166]
3.48
Critics of the ‘fourteen day’
line, have in fact cited the Warnock Report itself for evidence of the
arbitrary nature of the point determined. The Report states:
While, as we have seen, the timing of the different stages of
development is critical, once the process has begun, there is no particular
part of the developmental process that is more important than another; all are
part of a continuous process, and unless each stage takes place normally, at
the correct time, and in the correct sequence, further development will cease.
Thus biologically there is no one single identifiable stage in the development
of the embryo beyond which the in vitro embryo should not be kept alive.
However we agreed that this was an area in which some precise decision must be
taken, in order to allay public anxiety.[167]
3.49
If the view that the early
embryo is not yet fully our moral fellow is argued with reference to
biologically significant ‘marker’ events, the view that it is fully ‘one of us’
is often supported with reference to the dangers inherent in the systematic
exclusion of certain classes of human being from the human moral community.
3.50
For example, the Southern Cross
Bioethics Institute argued that:
down through history there have been circumstances when
personhood was denied to certain groups of people, usually for the purpose of
withholding their basic human rights. For example, the Canadian Indian Act 1880 states that ‘the term person means an
individual other than an Indian’. Within 5 years this changed. The Canada Franchise Act 1885 states that
‘[a person] is a male person, including an Indian and excluding a person of
Mongolian or Chinese Race’.[168]
3.51
The Catholic Archdiocese of
Melbourne argued that:
If [embryos] are tiny
human beings then the fact that they are tiny is no more morally relevant than
that they are black or white, Australian or foreign, boy or girl, at the beginning
of life or soon to die. They are members of the human family...Reducing members
of our human family to mere commodities or lab animals will ultimately be
corrupting for us all.[169]
3.52
In a similar vein, the South
Australian Branch of Do No Harm stated:
An embryo is a member of the human family equal in status to any
other...Experimentation on embryos is no different to experimenting upon any
human being. The size or age of the human being does not alter their status as
part of the human family nor does it determine (or diminish) their rights to
protection under the law.[170]
3.53
Dr Nicholas Tonti-Filippini
developed a brief ontological argument on the nature of the human embryo:
From the moment that the first cell is formed, a human embryo is
an individual organism oriented to development to human adulthood, normally
requiring only nutrition and a favourable environment for that development to
occur, and whose inherited nature is formed by the human genome which carries
the inherent radical capacity for rationality that is distinctive of human
beings.[171]
3.54
An argument for the moral
status of the embryo based on human rights conventions was also developed by Ms
Rita Joseph. She argued in her submission that to pass this Bill would be to
contravene international human rights law, saying that:
This proposed bill will run directly counter to Australia’s firm
and repeated commitments to provide legislative protection for maternity and
for all children before birth. This
bill, if brought into law, will fail to comply with a whole raft of fundamental
UN States’ obligations under international human rights instruments to which
Australia has committed and subsequently should honour.[172]
3.55
Dr Katrina Hallen also provided
a long list of international human rights instruments which she claimed
supported the right of human embryos to not be subjected to destructive
research, including the Nuremburg Code, the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the Declaration
of Helsinki.[173]
3.56
In considering the different
kinds of argument for thinking that the early embryo shares fully in our
humanity, and hence is deserving of the same moral protection as any other
human being, the Committee notes the following points:
-
the focus on biological markers is an attempt to
isolate an ‘objective’ point at which a morally relevant difference in the
embryo’s development can be recognised;
-
the application of ‘anti-discrimination’ and
‘rights’ arguments in favour of the embryo is an attempt to alter the perspective
on the debate, such that the embryo can be ‘seen’ as vulnerable, as others
historically have been, to our lack of recognition. The use of the language of
‘family membership’ or ‘kinship’ is significant here. From the perspective of
these arguments, the identification of biological markers after conception is
not so much the identification of
‘objective’ features but is an expression
of a refusal of recognition or of kinship with the early embryo.
3.57
It may be argued that behind
this debate is a more fundamental question. That question involves the issue of
what it is involved in, or what content can be given to claim that the early
human embryo shares fully in the moral status we assign to adult human beings.
3.58
This issue may be further
illuminated by considering the view of those who assign to the embryo some
moral status, but one which is limited in comparison with the status assigned
to an adult human being.
Limited moral status
3.59
The ascription of moral status
is both constituted by and recognised through the responses or practices which
attend particular relationships or which mark particular events.
3.60
For example, the ascription of
full moral status to human beings is marked by, among other things, the
prohibition on murder, the institutions of justice and by rituals of mourning
and reconciliation. It is marked also by the fact that we are able to take
seriously the notion of responding to another with respect or love, and of
responding with remorse to the wrongs we do them.
3.61
The fact that it is difficult
for some to take seriously certain forms of response to early embryos may
arguably itself reveal that their moral status is more limited or is at least
different from ‘ours’. For example, embryos allowed to ‘succumb’ are not given
funerals; donating parents are not considered to be abandoning their children;
and there seem to be limits on the extent to which ‘parents’ mourn their unused
embryos or to which scientists might intelligibly feel remorse for their
treatment of them. These responses all seem to point to the difficulty for some
of taking seriously the notion that embryos enjoy just the same moral status as
‘we’ do.
3.62
These considerations are not,
of course, decisive. For some, the inability seriously to imagine these kinds
of responses may be indicators of the failure of imagination or sensibility
rather than of the ‘status’ of the embryo.
3.63
Nevertheless, these
considerations seem to point to the possibility of there being a ‘third way’
between the denial of any moral status to the early embryo and the ascription
of the same status as possessed by adult human beings.
3.64
According to this ‘third way’,
the unborn belong in a sense to the
human family and are deserving of forms
of moral consideration. But this leaves open the question of just what forms
that consideration must take.
3.65
The Committee notes that the
Bill itself, and some of those who support it, implicitly adopt this third way.
3.66
Clearly some moral status is
accorded to embryos. This shows itself in features such as the limitation on
the age of the embryos to be used, the prohibition on the creation of embryos
specifically for research, and the specification that the research to be
undertaken must be serious and must not entail the unnecessary destruction of
embryos. Recognition of the moral status of embryos has taken the form of a
policy of ‘harm minimisation’.
3.67
Nevertheless the limitation of
the moral status accorded to human embryos is revealed by the very existence of
the Bill, which presupposes that the interests of adult human beings in the
potential benefits of the research take precedence over any interests possessed
by the embryos.
3.68
The Committee noted earlier in
its discussion, that for those who think that the human embryo is morally
equivalent to an adult or child, there can be no moral justification for
allowing it to be destroyed for the benefit of others.
3.69
For those who think, however,
that the human embryo under 14 days does not enjoy precisely the same moral
status as an adult or child, then the nature of any further reasons for
supporting or objecting to the practice becomes decisive.
3.70
In the remainder of the
chapter, the Committee will outline the nature of the ‘further reasons’ given
in evidence, both for and against destructive experimentation on human embryos.
The nature of these reasons may be divided into two main categories, namely
utilitarian or consequentialist, and other arguments.
Utilitarian arguments
3.71
The utilitarian argument in
favour of engaging in stem cell research focused on the potential therapeutic
benefits that might arise from it. These benefits, it is said, would accrue not
only to the thousands of individuals suffering from a host of diseases and
disabilities, but through them to their families and the whole community.
3.72
The benefits would be measured
in terms of increased health and well-being, or ‘quality of life’, as well as
in terms of cost savings to the community’s health and welfare budgets.
3.73
Ms Sheila Royles, Spokesperson,
Coalition for Advancement of Medical Research Australia (CAMRA) told the
Committee that CAMRA believed that ‘embryonic stem cell research holds one of
the greatest hopes for finding a cure for hundreds and thousands of Australians
with diseases and disabilities. We believe that these people should have the
opportunity for a better quality of life and to not literally be protected to
death by legislation’.[174]
3.74
Ms Royles outlined the scale of
the potential benefit of research in the following terms:
In terms of the key stats for some of these patient groups, one
person dies of motor neurone disease every day - that is a larger number than
AIDS - and the life expectancy is on average three to four years. One person is
confined to a wheelchair every day in Australia, and there are 100,000 children
and adults with juvenile diabetes in Australia who have to inject themselves
two or three times a day just to stay alive. The cost to the community of
looking after these people is many billions of dollars.[175]
3.75
James Shepherd, the 13-year old
youth ambassador for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, spoke to the
Committee of the personal cost of living with juvenile diabetes. Mr Shepherd
said that he had lived with juvenile diabetes since he was five years old and
that ‘it has been quite traumatic for myself and my family’:
In the course of my life I have had approaching 7,000 needles
and approximately 16,000 finger pricks, but that is just an external factor
because it is more than anything mentally difficult to cope with diabetes. For
example, there is always the looming prospect on the horizon of complications
which can derive from diabetes, such as blindness, kidney problems and the
increased chance of death due to heart disease, to name a few.[176]
3.76
James Shepherd went on to say
that his diabetes ‘affects everything I do. There is no break; there is no
holiday’. He informed the Committee that:
There are approximately 100,000 juvenile diabetics in Australia,
and there are more being diagnosed each year. I think all of us deserve a
chance for a cure. As Sheila said, the cure could lie in adult stem cells or
embryonic stem cells or it could lie in one of the many other types of
research, but I think that every possibility for a cure should be fully
explored before it is banned completely. It is a hard thing to live with, and I
think we have every right to a cure and any way that cure could be achieved
should be fully tested before that window is closed.[177]
3.77
Mr Kevin Langdon, President,
Motor Neurone Disease Association of NSW, made similar points on behalf of
those suffering from motor neurone disease. He said:
Imagine a disease which little by little robs you of the use of
your arms, your legs, and even your voice. Imagine seeing the muscles in your
body slowly waste away while your senses and intellect remain perfectly in
order. The ability to feel emotion - love, anger, joy and bitterness - remains
intact, but one has no way of expressing them.[178]
3.78
The disease, Mr Langdon said,
profoundly affects not only the individual patient, but every member of the
family. Dr Paul Brock, who also suffers from motor neurone disease, informed the
Committee that:
from the moment I am lifted out of bed in the morning until the
bedclothes are pulled up over me every night, in order to live I am literally dependent on my wife, my two
daughters aged 7 and 11, my team of carers, and a variety of devices. The
physical, emotional, stressful and financial costs to me and my family cannot
be expressed in words. I can no longer walk; nor hug my wife and daughters. I
cannot eat without assistance. Nor use the toilet or have a shower unaided. An
author of over 100 books, monographs, chapters, scholarly articles, and poems -
I can now barely sign my name.[179]
3.79
The Committee also heard
evidence from the Australasian Spinal Research Trust, represented by Mr Robert
Turner, Honorary Chief Executive Officer, and Ms Johanna Knott, Director. Ms
Knott expressed the view that, given the promise offered by research into
embryonic stem cells, it would be unethical not to allow it to proceed. She
said:
Many hundreds of thousands of Australians suffer from serious or
currently incurable diseases or conditions. In fact, one in eight suffers from
neurological disorders alone. Twenty thousand plus people in Australia have
severe spinal cord injuries, and that rate grows by one per day. Our government
is supposed to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people, and I
believe we have a moral responsibility to help others. But time is crucial. If
scientists are forced to attempt to make adult stem cells behave like embryonic
stem cells you could waste five years or more, and many people just do not have
that time.[180]
3.80
In a similar vein, Dr Brock
claimed that ‘[t]here is an ethical and moral imperative...to encourage
scientifically rigorous and ethically responsible embryonic stem cell research
in its virtuous pursuit of human healing’.[181]
He objected to the common use, by opponents of embryonic stem cell research, of
the assertion that ‘the ends do not justify the means’. Dr Brock maintained
that:
what is central to the ethical and moral debate is the need to
distinguish between some ends and some means. While there are some ‘ends’
that can never justify the ‘means’,
there are some ‘ends’ that can only
justify the ‘means’. For example, when the Nazis tortured concentration camp
inmates by injecting dangerous drugs for ‘experimental’ purposes and by
removing body parts - this was evil. But when an anaesthetist administers
dangerous drugs as part of an operation to remove a healthy kidney of a donor
to heal a life by transplantation - this is good.[182]
3.81
James Shepherd, finally,
exhorted Committee members to consider the arguments presented from the
perspective that they themselves are potential sufferers of currently incurable
conditions. He said:
it is not often that people without diseases relate to us. The
media commonly refer to us as ‘these people who deserve a transplant’, and
stuff like that...Subconsciously people distance themselves. They think, ‘That’s
them. I couldn’t have that’, whereas it is possible for anyone here to walk
into hospital and walk out knowing that they have one of the diseases
represented here. So the point should be made that we are just normal people
who are unfortunate enough to catch these diseases; we are not a completely
separate race of individuals.[183]
3.82
All of these witnesses clearly
recognised that possible positive outcomes were in the future, rather than
tomorrow. As Ms Knott said, ‘I do not expect a cure tomorrow or even next year,
and I do not intend to overstate the promise of research, but how can you
overstate hope?’[184]
3.83
There were virtually no
utilitarian arguments presented against engaging in stem cell research. One
such argument was made by Dr Nicholas Tonti-Filippini who expressed concern
that products from such research may eventually be used in developing
bio-warfare technologies. He noted that ‘pharmo-kinetic’ research is currently
being undertaken to identify ‘genomic risk factors for pharmaceutical
products’. However,
This type of knowledge may well provide race specific
information about the effects of bio-pharmacological agents and hence a
bio-warfare use of the technology...The advantage of embryonic stem cell culture
in this respect is their proliferative nature - their rapid replication and
growth. It may well be that infectious or carcinogenic agents could be
developed that were specific to particular genotypes based on research on stem
cell differentiation studies.[185]
3.84
A number of other submissions
to the inquiry raised matters that may be categorised broadly as concerns about
the ‘slippery slope’. Although this style of argumentation may be considered utilitarian,
or at least consequentialist, the Committee will treat them separately in the
next section.
Other arguments
3.85
A variety of other arguments
were presented to the Committee, both for and against allowing destructive
research on human embryos to proceed under the conditions specified by the
Bill. In what follows, the Committee outlines these views and any rebuttals of
them that appeared in evidence.
Slippery slope
3.86
One concern expressed under
this heading relates to the feasibility of limiting the embryos eligible for
use to those deemed ‘excess’ from IVF programmes. The Anglican Diocese of
Sydney stated that:
If...we decide to establish an industry which is dependent on
human embryos for laboratory material, we are establishing human embryos as a
resource the demand for which may well continue. Requests for more human
embryos, be they frozen excess ART embryos created after 5 April or fresh ones
created specifically for research, will come before Parliament. The
establishment of embryonic stem cell research in local biotech industries will
invariably lead to requests for embryos which will meet current Good
Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) safety requirements if therapeutic product
development is to occur. These cGMP requirements are different from standards required
in IVF programmes and are more stringent. Frozen excess ART embryos will never
be adequate as a source.[186]
3.87
A second concern relates to the
relationship between allowing destructive experimentation on embryos and future
pressure to allow cloning. Although cloning is explicitly disallowed by the
present Bill, evidence expressed concern that destructive experimentation is
nevertheless the first step down that road. This concern is given weight by the
fact that there has apparently been a gradual slippage away from parameters
that surround the acceptable treatment of embryos since the IVF programme
began.
3.88
For example, Dr Peter McCullagh
commented that it ‘seems rather perverse, in the light of the advocacy for use
of the resource which embryos are now
considered to represent, that advocacy for permission to develop embryo
freezing techniques in 1982 was framed in terms of its benefit to the embryo’.[187]
3.89
Dr Joe Santamaria, a consultant
physician and bioethicist, said that it is nave to think that the present prohibition
of cloning, on the grounds of its ‘repugnance’ to the community, will last. He
said:
If you pass the current legislation for the use of human embryos
for experimental purposes (whether they are surplus or not), you have stripped
all human embryos, however conceived, of any moral status. Once the law is
activated, the procedures become normative and the community’s innate
repugnance is eroded.[188]
3.90
Similar points were made in the
submission of Right to Life Australia Inc. A speech given by Ms Margaret Tighe,
President, Right to Life Australia, at Monash University on 8 May 2002, noted:
It has been interesting to observe the slow but steady advances
of the lucrative reproductive technology industry since the birth of
Melbourne’s first IVF baby in 1980. The progress of that burgeoning industry
has been an exercise in ‘softly, softly, catchee monkey’! In these early days,
it was all motherhood and apple pie. No experiments on human embryos said the
scientists. No freezing and stockpiling of embryos. No selection and discarding
of embryos to name but a few excesses. Yet one by one, these promises have been
broken...[189]
3.91
Ms Tighe opined that:
That is why, as surely as night follows day cloning of human
embryos will be the next stage (only so called therapeutic cloning mind you)
followed subsequently with seductive arguments and media campaigns designed to
usher in reproductive cloning. It can always be justified by the hard case...And
with a slick PR campaign to influence the gullible public into thinking it’s
cruel to oppose these measures because of the supposed good they might do, we
will eventually see a cloned baby on TV.[190]
Conceptual loss
3.92
A number of submissions
referred, in different ways, to the idea that permitting certain practices will
lead, through their alteration of our concepts about human life and its
significance, to the loss of certain possibilities or values.
3.93
For example, some submissions
expressed concern that the failure to respect the ‘human dignity’ of the early
embryo would lead to the erosion of fundamental respect for other human beings,
particularly the most vulnerable. Dr Amanda Lamont asked:
If today we decide to ignore the dignity of a baby in a test
tube, what is there to protect the dignity of those deemed ‘less fully
functional’ by our society tomorrow? We
are the elderly generations of tomorrow, and those of us involved in this
debate will be personally reaping the effects in our old age. Do we want to be
allowed to die with dignity when our time comes, or would it be acceptable for
our bodies to be used for experimentation while we are still half-alive, like
the frozen embryos...?[191]
3.94
The Hon Graham Kierath argued
that:
Once we have made the irrevocable and frightening step to accept
exploitation of, and experimentation on, human beings, there can then be no
objection in principle to going further and further...Are we a society which
protects the most vulnerable - the poor, the sick and the unborn, from the
predations of those who are more powerful, more vocal or even dishonest? If so,
then there is no way that experimentation, or the use of stem cells from,
embryos, ie. tiny human beings, should even be contemplated.[192]
Commodification of life
3.95
Other evidence expressed
concern about the potential of certain practices to cheapen our very sense of the
significance of life. Submissions spoke in terms of the commodification or instrumentalisation
of life.[193]
3.96
The Australian Catholic Bishops
Conference criticised the capacity of IVF clinics to manipulate the numbers of
‘excess’ embryos produced and wrote:
To so manipulate the production of human life is an affront to
human dignity and fosters a view of life which is more akin to the embryo as
‘property’, able to be bought and sold as a commodity, than as a member of the
human family...In short, the dominant paradigm promoted by the destructive, but
commercially profitable, use of the ‘frozen generation’ is that of ‘production
- manufacture - commodification - commercialisation of life’.[194]
3.97
For some, the impact of this
‘commodification’ of the early embryo’s life is already illustrated by the fact
that parents are able to donate their ‘excess’ embryos for research. The
National Civic Council (WA) argued that:
The Bill is drafted on the assumption that human embryos are in
a relationship to those for whom, or from whose gametes they were created, that
is more akin to the relationship of owner to property than of parent to
offspring.[195]
3.98
However, the Council said:
‘Parents are not permitted under common law to make decisions for their
children that are patently contrary to the life and welfare of their children’.[196]
3.99
The Reverend Professor Michael
Tate, who chaired the Senate Select Committee on Human Embryo Experimentation
in 1985, submitted that:
The market model is such a dominant feature of our current world
culture that sometimes it is difficult to appreciate that property is not the
all determining concept governing relationships in human society...We certainly
concurred...that the market model was quite inadequate in the case of this
subject.
The embryo is not ‘property belonging to’ gamete donors or
either one of them. The ‘property rights’ of the provider of egg or sperm are
exhausted on fertilization. At that point, guardianship arises, and would
ordinarily be exercised by the intended social parents...[197]
3.100
The Committee received some
evidence from the organisation, ACCESS Australia’s National Infertility
Network, however, which argued against the view that the willingness of parents
to donate their embryos for research signifies a lack of respect or a crude
commodification of life. ACCESS submitted:
Those of us who have created embryos have grappled with the
ethical and social implications of what to do with them because we must. They
are ultimately our responsibility. Then we live with the decisions we make
about them. We care about the fate of the embryos that were created to be our
children, to see that their existence has had some meaning. We do not believe
that to use them for research would be disrespectful, quite the contrary. For
many couples, the opportunity to donate their embryos for ART research gives
them some added meaning, as they contribute to scientific knowledge that will
lead to improvements in ART practice and ease human suffering. No one else
values or respects these embryos more.[198]
3.101
The submission emphasises that
‘we value life and we value children, which is why we have been prepared to go
through extensive investigations and treatment to try to create a family’.[199]
Community sentiment
3.102
The Committee notes further
that concern about the conceptual or societal effect of allowing destructive
research on early embryos does not appear to be reflected in general community
sentiment.
3.103
The report of the Select
Committee on Stem Cell Research in the United Kingdom noted that ‘the question
of research on human embryos has to be considered within the context of the law
in the United Kingdom and the social attitudes it reflects’.[200] That context, the Committee noted,
includes legislation permitting abortion in a relatively wide range of
circumstances and an IVF practice which involves the discarding of a
substantial number of surplus embryos. The Committee suggested that: ‘It would
be difficult to justify an absolute prohibition on the destruction of early
embryos while permitting abortion in a relatively wide range of circumstances
post-implantation - indeed well after the emergence of the primitive streak and
into the foetal stage of development’.[201]
3.104
In the Australian context, the
Committee notes also that 72 per cent of Australians surveyed have indicated
their approval of research using excess IVF embryos for the development of
therapies, assuming the informed consent of donors.[202] Further, according to ACCESS,
approximately 60 per cent of couples involved in ART treatment will choose to
donate the embryos they no longer need for research.[203]
3.105
Dr Megan Best questioned the
significance of these levels of community support, however, saying that:
I cannot help but feel that the promotion of this bill by many
proponents has been misleading and I wonder if destructive research on human embryos
would be as widely accepted by the community if it were known that the purposes
for which they will be used may turn out to be not life-saving but economical.
(I am thinking of some pharmaceutical applications here).[204]
Holistic conception of the human
condition
3.106
A final objection raised on
conceptual grounds to the research concerns the damage done by refusing to
integrate the experience of disease and disability into a holistic conception
of the human condition.
3.107
Mr Erik Leipoldt informed the
Committee that he has lived as a quadriplegic for almost 25 years. He wrote:
People have an innate fear of disability, imperfection and
mental and physical decay. We want to escape this human condition. But to
really escape it would be to outgrow it by developing a more wholesome concept
of it in our own minds. Wanting to control everything only leads to more
unhappiness. Learning a balance between what can be realistically controlled
and what is best learned to be lived with leads to a happier life...This means
that we cannot expect embryonic stem cell cures to address the real causes of
our suffering. We can start by acknowledging vulnerability and dependence as
parts of the human condition, rather than overemphasise physical perfection and
independence and apply them in our private lives and policies.[205]
3.108
Mr Liepoldt also argued that
disability is being portrayed as a ‘tragic condition’ and used by those
promoting embryonic stem cell research in ‘an irresponsible and opportunistic
fashion’ to set back the cause of ensuring that people with disabilities are
‘accepted as equally valued members of society’.[206]
3.109
These ‘tactics’, according to
Mr Liepoldt have implications for society’s conceptions of ‘normality’ or ‘a
good life’, and neglect the fact that the ‘collective values and attitudes that
our society applies to people with disabilities’ are ‘responsible for
transforming much of the impairment to a disability experience’.[207] For these reasons, Mr Leipoldt said
that he found it offensive to be used ‘as a lobbying tool for the biotech
industry’.[208]
3.110
Other evidence echoed these
concerns, and drew the further conclusion that many people with disabilities or
diseases are being manipulated into supporting embryonic stem cell research by
scientists whose real interests lie elsewhere.
3.111
Dr Peter McCullagh, for
example, spoke of the ‘exploitation of highly vulnerable people living with
disabilities’,[209] while Dr David van
Gend asserted that it was ‘a bad thing’ to say to the parents of a child who is
paralysed that ‘[e]mbryo stem cells are your hope’. He said ‘it is a false
hope. You cannot do that to paralysed people nor to MS patients or Parkinson
patients. You do not do that’.[210]
3.112
The Committee received evidence
from other people with a disability or illness who objected to the destruction
of human embryos. For example, the Disability Action Group said that:
We...strongly
object to the cynical exploitation of our disabilities by people who wish to
carry out destructive research on human embryos. Arguments for such research,
which we believe to be mostly unconscionable, must be made without gratuitously
using us as human leverage...
Furthermore,
recent confirmation of the fact that “excess” embryos may be used as genetic
material for drug testing puts people with disabilities in the invidious position
of benefiting from others' destruction.[211]
3.113
Dr Christopher Newell, a
bioethicist and academic who also has a disability, acknowledged his debt to
medical science but also the harm that is proposed to the embryo:
...I am a person with disability who, like so many, is alive today
because of the developments of medical science.
Medical science offers many potential benefits into the future
but it is clear that there must be limits. One of the basic ethical principles
directly derived from the Hippocratic tradition, affirmed in a variety of
non-consequentialist philosophical and religious codes, is “first of all do no
harm”. It is clear that the proposal to use embryonic stem cells will provide a
harm...[212]
3.114
The group Diabetics for Ethical
Treatment objected to the stance of some patient advocacy groups:
Some patient advocate groups which support destructive research
involving human embryos are putting themselves forward as representing all
patients with degenerative diseases, including diabetics. We categorically
reject the right of these groups to speak for us...
We firmly believe that an attack on the dignity and well-being
of any group of human beings is an attack on human dignity itself. It is a
profound insult to people with disabilities and illnesses, including diabetics,
to presume that we are willing to accept therapies developed at the cost of
other human lives.[213]
3.115
The Committee also received
evidence, however, from people living with illness or disability which strongly
disputed the claim that they had been manipulated or exploited into supporting
embryonic stem cell research.
3.116
Mr Robert Turner, Honorary
Chief Executive Officer, Australasian Spinal Research Trust, and the father of
a quadriplegic son, indeed suggested that such claims were themselves
patronising:
Certainly, ...one of the things they fight against is being talked
down to like that as though they have not got the ability to discriminate
between what is exploitation and what is not. When I take him out in a
wheelchair...people talk to me instead of talking to him simply because he is in
a wheelchair. This is symptomatic of that: ‘They don’t know what they’re doing;
poor fools. Somebody has their hand up their back manipulating them’. Nothing
could be further from the truth.[214]
3.117
Ms Johanna Knott told the
Committee that she was responsible for founding the Australasian Spinal
Research Trust and that ‘no-one could say I was manipulated into doing that’.[215] She said that:
[F]or 10 years I have not been able to eat, wash, go to the
bathroom or get dressed without someone else’s help. Some people may be able to
get used to living like that, but I am not one of those people. I have a keen
interest in research, and I am deeply disturbed by any attempts to block
scientific progress.[216]
3.118
She also advised the Committee
that: ‘The reality is that we do follow very closely, and we have done for a
number of years, what research has gone on around the world, and I think we do
have a good sense of what is credible and what is not’.[217]
Distribution of resources
3.119
Some submissions expressed the
opinion that the money set aside for embryonic stem cell research could more
profitably be spent on other research or services, and thus that the question
of the ethical distribution of resources needs to be considered.
3.120
For example, Dr Christopher
Newell stated that:
If the Australian parliament really wanted to address the
situation of Australians with disabilities those tear-streaked speeches would
also be focusing on the significant unmet need for those of us with disability
and our families. Likewise it would be focussing on putting its resources into
community support and primary health care interventions which would also have a
role in preventing and ameliorating disability. Sadly many of the interventions
which would ameliorate the situation of people with a disability in Australia
and overseas are not sexy or hi-tech.[218]
3.121
The Australian Family
Association (Bayswater/Boronia Branch) expressed the view that the promise of
results from research into embryonic stem cells is highly speculative, and that
money should be provided only to more ‘proven’ research or services. The
Association wrote:
If adult stem cell research is where the genuine hope lies, then
why are precious public funds being diverted away from it? With many programs
ranging from abused women to drug addiction to Aboriginal health crying out for
money, why would the Government be allocating our money to such a questionable
line of research?[219]
3.122
Similarly, the Catholic
Archdiocese of Melbourne questioned the validity of funding embryonic stem cell
research at the expense of ‘the ethically uncontentious but scientifically more
promising avenues’ of adult stem cell research.[220]
3.123
Often, questions about the
allocation of funds were expressed in tandem with suspicion about the motives
and commercial incentives driving the biotechnology industry in its support for
embryonic stem cell research.[221]
3.124
The Committee received no
evidence which analysed the actual distribution of research funds between
different research priorities.
Autonomy argument
3.125
Some evidence argued that
potential donors have the right to choose whether their embryos are used in
research or not, and that the Government should not legislate to prevent them
being allowed to make that choice.[222]
3.126
The Juvenile Diabetes Research
Foundation stated its view that, assuming the appropriate ethical and
scientific guidelines are in place, ‘it should be the moral choice of those
individuals that drive the donation of excess embryos into medical research’.[223]
3.127
Professor David de Kretser AO,
Director, Monash Institute of Reproduction and Development, suggested that:
For the opponents of this legislation we would propose the
examination of the premise, already accepted by our society, namely that the
parents of a child on a life support system that is about to be withdrawn are
accorded the right to decide whether the organs of that child can be donated
for transplantation. Surely the parents of an embryo, whose life support system
is about to be withdrawn have an equal right to donate the cells of that
embryo, potential transplants of the future, to generate embryonic stem cells.[224]
3.128
Ms Sandra Dill, Executive
Director, ACCESS, Australia’s National Infertility Network Ltd, exhorted the
Committee to:
acknowledge infertile couples - who have sought from the
beginning to act in their embryos’ best interests - by allowing them to make
decisions according to their conscience. Fertile people in our community enjoy
the right to act in their children’s best interests; importantly, you will
treat infertile people with the same respect by ensuring us corresponding
rights to make decisions about embryos that once had the potential to be our
children.[225]
3.129
Against this line of argument,
however, Dr David van Gend from Do No Harm, argued that if widespread embryo
research is allowed to go ahead, Australians will have difficulty exercising
their right to conscientiously object or opt out of involvement. In this sense,
the autonomy of those opposed to the research would be at risk.[226]
3.130
Dr Tonti-Filippini also
expressed concern at the extent to which the autonomy of donors is protected in
the Bill. He commented that donors would not know what would happen to their
embryos or the stem cells derived from them, and said:
there is no reporting back to the people who gave them in the
first place. I just find the respect for autonomy-let alone respect for embryos
and stem cells-to be appalling and a complete oversight in the structure of
this.[227]
Scientific, economic and
technological impact
3.131
A number of witnesses warned of
the likely negative impact on Australian science and technology of the failure
to pass legislation permitting embryonic stem cell research. That impact will,
it is said, be caused by the fact that Australian researchers will be forced to
continue their research in countries such as Singapore and the UK and by the
loss of international research funding.[228]
3.132
For example, BresaGen, a
publicly listed Australian company ‘acknowledged as one of the three world
leaders in the therapeutic application of Human ESC [embryonic stem cell]
technology’, wrote:
We believe this legislation is critically important in
maintaining Australia’s current high scientific position in both ES cell
research and assisted reproductive technology (ART). The change is important
for the advancement of therapeutic opportunities for patient care and disease
treatment, and for the progress of the Australian Biotechnology Industry.
The passage of this legislation is essential in BresaGen
retaining a significant presence in this country. BresaGen has overseas nodes,
and failure of this legislation to pass will certainly force BresaGen to
consider its Australian presence.[229]
3.133
Professor David de Kretser
warned that the failure of the legislation would severely compromise the
scientific prospects of stem cell research in Australia as well as emerging
biotechnology industries. He noted that future research would require that stem
cell lines be sourced from overseas, probably from commercial companies, and
that these sources ‘will almost certainly wish to retain some rights to any
intellectual property generated by the research’. The consequence will be a
substantial loss of control over the commercialisation of research done in
Australia, which ‘is not in Australia’s long-term economic interests’.[230]
3.134
Professor Silburn, however,
talked of his concern about the commercialisation of research ‘as a scientist
who is very committed to keeping public research in the public domain. I am not
interested in commercialisation or patents. That is not the issue of what true
science is about’.[231]
3.135
ES Cell International Pte Ltd
noted that a ‘political environment supportive of stem cell research is one
reason why ESI has invested so considerably in Australia, and will be a
significant factor in relation to our future investment decisions’.[232] Professor Alan Trounson, Deputy
Director, Monash Institute of Reproduction and Development, and CEO Designate,
National Stem Cell Centre, informed the Committee that the award of
Commonwealth funding to the National Stem Cell Centre has enabled the
recruitment of internationally recognised scientists to Australia. It is also
the major reason ‘for retaining one of Australia’s most eminent adult stem cell
researchers’ who ‘declined a very attractive offer to move to the USA in August
2002’.[233]
3.136
Professor Trounson also noted
that:
Presumably, if the bill is not passed, we will have to buy
embryonic stem cells - if we are going to continue the research - from
overseas. All the current embryonic stem cells are subject to some commercial
restrictions and nearly all of them require that you return the intellectual
property to that company. All of those companies are now majority owned
overseas.[234]
3.137
Finally, Professor Bob
Williamson, Director, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute and Professor of
Medical Genetics, University of Melbourne, noted that the proposed legislation
is already more restrictive than those regulating researchers in the UK, all
non-NIH research in the United States, and Singapore. He said:
I hope that we will be sufficiently in step with other OECD
countries so that legislation does not disadvantage Australian attempts to
create sustainable jobs and new therapies, and cause some of our research to
move abroad.
I also hope we will not be in the ethically dubious position of
having to import the results of research that we ban in this country, to offer
therapy to our children.[235]
3.138
Some witnesses expressed
concern, however, that the economic interests of those involved directly in the
research may be distorting the arguments in favour of stem cell research. Dr
Brian Pollard claimed that comments from those with a stake in the embryo
research industry should be considered against a range of pressures and
motivating factors:
It would be foolish...not to recognise that other motivating
factors are also undeniably present, though they may never be made public, such
as scientific intellectual satisfaction, scientific kudos from respected
colleagues locally and internationally, advancement in status or employment and
the potential for vast monetary gain.[236]
National legislation
3.139
Evidence to the Committee
suggested that the passage of national legislation permitting research
involving human embryos under specified circumstances might be the lesser of
two evils. This is because, in the absence of a comprehensive national
framework, the States would be free to enact their own legislation that could
be less restrictive than the legislation before the Commonwealth Parliament.
3.140
The Queensland Government
stated that the Council of Australian Governments had driven the pursuit of a
nationally consistent framework in this area, because the kind of ‘dual system
of regulation such as that which exists in the United States’ is not in
Australia’s interests. It considered that such a system sends inconsistent
messages to the community, scientists and investors, and ‘creates loopholes and
safe havens for practices which are considered either universally abhorrent,
unsafe or unacceptable’.[237]
3.141
Professor Martin Pera warned
that, defeat of the legislation would both restrict the ability of Australian
scientists ‘to remain at the forefront of embryonic stem cell research’, and
‘return us to an unsatisfactory position in which contradictory piecemeal
regulations govern embryo research in the various states and territories’.[238]
3.142
Four of the biotechnology
companies involved in embryonic stem cell research in Australia are members of
AusBiotech Ltd, a company which describes itself as ‘at the edge of acadaemia
and industry’.[239] The Executive
Director of AusBiotech, Dr Anthony Coulepis, told the Committee that:
All four companies have said quite clearly to us that they
believe they are at the cutting edge. If this legislation does not go through,
they are first of all going to turn to their states - which is why we believe
that the senators who are concerned about this legislation would be less
concerned if there were national legislation which then controls what we do in
the country, as opposed to allowing the country to go its own way. One of the
cautions we are getting from our stakeholders is that national legislation will
give us that degree of unity to be able to say how we can control this better.
So the companies are saying, ‘If this does not go through, we will first turn
to our states. If we cannot get any relief from our states, we are going to go
offshore’.[240]
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