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Australian Parliament to Review Stem Cell Limits

Posted on: Thursday, 17 August 2006, 01:20 CDT

By James Grubel

CANBERRA -- Australian politicians will push to overturn a ban on cloning stem cells for medical research after Australia's conservative Prime Minister John Howard said he would allow a conscience vote on the issue.

The issue, to be debated in September, will stir deep moral passions among Australia's politicians and likely divide the ruling Liberal-National Party government soon after an internal revolt forced Howard on Monday to scrap tough new refugee laws.

"Putting a bill up on such a controversial issue will set mate against mate," the leader of the National Party in the Senate, Ron Boswell, told reporters on Thursday.

Australia imposed strict limits on embryonic stem cell research in 2002, only allowing research on leftover embryos from IVF programmes under legislation that mirrors laws in the United States.

Moves to expand embryonic stem cell research in the United States failed when President George W. Bush in July use his veto to knock down new laws.

An Australian government review of the laws in late 2005 said scientists should be allowed to harvest embryos for stem cell research but Howard, a moral conservative, and his cabinet voted to continue the restrictions.

However, a growing number of government lawmakers want the laws overturned and will bring in private legislation to allow scientists to expand their research, prompting Howard to say he would allow a conscience vote.

Former health minister Kay Patterson on Thursday said she would draw up legislation, ensuring the issue would be forced to a vote in parliament, despite warnings that changes would be offering false hope to people with disabilities.

"Don't be sucked in by false promises and false cures, of people leaping up from wheelchairs. It's not going to happen," Boswell said.

Current Health Minister Tony Abbott, a Catholic who once studied to be a priest and is a close friend of Australian Cardinal George Pell, said he remained strongly opposed to embryonic stem cell research, saying a five-day-old embryo was a human life.

"So I think that entitles it to a degree of respect, certainly I think it should be afforded more respect than it will get if it is created simply to be destroyed," Abbott told reporters on Wednesday.

But Australian Democrats Senator Natasha Stott Despoja, a supporter of expanded stem cell research, said there was a strong case to update stem cell laws.

"I think there's a strong argument for updating our stem cell laws specifically, yes, to do with somatic cell nuclear transfer and other options that give us hope for the future that would see government investment in these potential cures for some of the most debilitating diseases," she said.

Somatic cell nuclear transfer involves taking the nucleus from a non-reproductive cell and inserting it into an egg cell. The egg, with the new nuclear material, or DNA, inserted is then stimulated to divide and grow. This technique is used to clone animals.

Conscience votes are rare in Australian parliament and have had mixed results. In 1997, a conscience vote backed Howard's stand to ban voluntary euthanasia, but a conscience vote in February this year went against Howard to allow wider use of the controversial abortion drug RU-486.

Source: REUTERS

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