Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 4 Hansard (10 April) . . Page.. 933 ..

MRS DUNNE (continuing):

patients with Parkinson's disease. The preliminary findings of this seem to be a massive breakthrough.

We need to be very careful when we are talking about this. To deal with adult stem cells is one issue, but to deal with embryonic stem cells is another. To say, "Well, look, there are 70,000 of them sitting around waiting to go to waste-it would be a shame for them to go to waste," is a means that, I believe, as a community we cannot embrace.

I would never want to see a cure for my children's cystic fibrosis-or the diabetes that they surely look down the barrel of encountering later in their lives-at the cost of another human being. As Mr Smyth has said, those 70,000 embryos that we have in cold storage in laboratories around the country are surely, as far as I am concerned, human life.

There is much emotion surrounding these issues, and we see it often. The other day we saw Premier Bob Carr referring to Christopher Reeves. Christopher Reeves is a great advocate for stem cell research, using his celebrity status. It is the same with Michael J Fox. Both people are suffering from debilitating diseases and conditions. But at what price do we play with other people's lives to fix somebody else's?

We know that there are emerging technologies from all around the world which say that adult stem cells have the potential to address many of the diseases that we are confronting. We see this on a daily basis-Parkinson's today, and then another story about heart disease.

This is something we should embrace. However, at the same time, we should not be going down the path of embracing stem cell research-for a variety of reasons, which have been canvassed here today. Ms Tucker referred to the exploitative nature of the IVF process for women-the process of super-ovulation, and the injection of drugs to create large numbers of eggs, with the clear knowledge that some of those will be wasted, in one way or another.

The fact that we have 70,000 frozen embryos across the country is a huge ethical question for us, but I do not think we should be addressing that ethical question by going down the path of an even more fraught ethical solution.

I know this might sound like hyperbole. I am trying not to do that in this debate, because there have been many instances of hyperbole. However, last night, Ms Tucker, Mrs Cross, other members of the Assembly and I were at the holocaust memorial day commemoration. There were young, and elderly, Jewish people together commemorating this great atrocity. I was thinking that we have the potential to see another atrocity here, with almost the same reasons given. I quote from an article that appeared in the Age on 8 April 2002-a couple of days ago. The author says:

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .