Mr. Speaker, I wanted to be here to participate in this debate. It is an interesting question about defining the human being and is one that has seized this place with regard to Bill C-56 on reproductive technologies. It allows us to raise some very important points about the abortion question. We should never be afraid to raise those issues or to understand what the fundamental issues are.
With regard to research, the tri-council policy statement, which was made in 1998 and reflected an international standard with regard to research on human beings, concluded that there should not be any research on an embryo once it hit 14 days. The reason is that at that point the embryo has proceeded far enough that it is past the primitive streak. It has a spinal cord. It has a fixed DNA. It cannot split into a twin. In fact it has all of the characteristics that it will have throughout the rest of its life if it were allowed to be in a nurturing environment and to develop further into another form of a human being. A human being does in fact look like an embryo at the beginning and it looks like an adult usually in an aged state in a later part. Human beings look different throughout their years. Therefore we should never be afraid to discuss the fundamentals.
With regard to Bill C-56, one of the issues is whether we would permit embryonic stem cell research. There are those who believe that human beings begin at conception, and I am one of them. Dr. Françoise Baylis, a medical doctor and ethicist with Dalhousie University and a member of the governing council of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, has appeared before Standing Committee on Health. She has said that in all our discussions and in all our legislation we should always remember that the embryo is a human being and it is a member of the human species. Therefore we do have research and medical testimony to this place that in fact an embryo is a human being.
The fact that there was a tri-council policy statement in 1998 that recognized a human being at least by day 14 has had no effect on the abortion debate. Anyone who feels that this issue is a matter of abortion should not be threatened by this discussion simply because of other views or opinions with regard to when a human being exists.
I thank the member for bringing the issue forward and not being afraid to discuss sensitive but important issues of the day.