Australia to continue therapeutic cloning ban

Australia's Cabinet has decided to keep in place a federal ban on therapeutic cloning research, rejecting the advice of an expert review published last year. Last December, a six-member Legislative Review Committee, chaired by the now deceased John Lockhart, a former Federal Court judge, recommended that the existing laws on cloning and stem cell research should be relaxed. But Prime Minister John Howard said last Friday that 'after careful reflection, the government is not disposed to make any changes to the existing national legislative framework for research involving human embryos'.

In Australia, the Research Involving Human Embryos Act and the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act, both passed in 2002 after much debate, together ban reproductive cloning, prevent scientists from cloning embryos to obtain stem cells and restrict them to research on surplus IVF embryos created before the acts were passed, and donated by IVF patients who no longer require them. All research must operate under a licensing scheme administered by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). However, the laws had a built-in three-year 'sunset clause', which means the debates needed to be revisited.

The Lockhart Review showed that there was 'clearly overwhelming support from the general public and the medical and scientific communities for maintaining a strong regulatory framework' in the area but also clear support for 'augmentation of the current system to allow research, within a rigorous ethical framework, into emerging scientific practices that will assist in the understanding of disease and disability'. On this basis, the Lockhart Committee recommended that while human reproductive cloning should be banned, cloning technology should be allowed to be used to produce embryos for stem cell research.

The Cabinet's decision to ignore the findings of the Lockhart Review has attracted criticism from supporters of therapeutic cloning, such as Liberal Party backbencher Mal Washer, who says there has not been enough debate on the issue. But the Federal Government's Leader in the Senate, Nick Minchin, says that he does not think Australia is ready to allow the research. 'We are talking about cloning here, and there was a clear view in the Parliament only four years ago that we should not allow cloning', he said. The move is due to be discussed at next month's Council of Australian Governments (COAG), at which Victorian Premier Steve Bracks and Queensland Premier Peter Beattie are expected to argue against the ban.

Minchin has cited the fraudulent claims made by South Korean stem cell researcher Woo Suk Hwang as one reason for continuing the ban on therapeutic cloning research, along with the fact that no-one has yet managed to establish a patient-specific embryonic stem cell-line. Hwang's trial at the Seoul Central District Court began last Tuesday, in which he is facing charges of fraud and embezzlement, along with five of his former colleagues.