Mr. Speaker, all these motions are mine so I should address each one of them. I would like the member for Winnipeg North Centre to have the last slot before question period.
The first motion, Motion No. 6, seeks to amend the definition of consent so that the informed consent will detail all of the consent provisions as outlined in the Canadian Institutes of Health Research guidelines, and they are very exhaustive. Currently the bill just says informed consent or consent is as we generally understand in the laws of Canada. Consent, in regard to consent that I know what is going on and all the other details, is far more detailed. I ask members to please consider allowing these guidelines, or what constitutes consent, to be incorporated into the bill so that there is no question that those who want to donate gametes, or have treatments or have embryos used for research will know to what they are consenting.
The second motion is Motion No. 80. It deals with the concept of necessary, as mentioned by the previous speaker. The health committee decided it wanted to define necessary or to say that necessary would be that there was no other ethical alternative to using embryonic stem cells which would achieve the same research objective; in fact not to use embryonic stem cells unless it was the last resort.
Motion No. 80 is precisely what the CIHR guidelines say. I have suggested we put in that the informed consent should incorporate those guidelines and should also require the approval of a research ethics board, those who know that it is all about ethics and would give their approval. Second, there should be a scientific peer review so that people who are in science and in the business would give their blessing that this is useful, constructive research.
Motion No. 81 has to do with the issue of pre-existing embryos, which is very important. Today, Dr. Françoise Baylis, in a abstract article in the Health Law Review , says that there are approximately 500 embryos in Canada that are stored in infertility clinic banks cryogenically. Of those, only about 250 would be available for research. Of those 250, only half would survive the thawing process. In other words, only 125 would be alive after being thawed out. Of the 125, Dr. Baylis then goes on say that only about 9, in their experience, would actually be able to generate stem cell lines that would be identifiable. Of that nine, only about half, or five, would actually develop stem cell lines which would be of a quality that would be useful for research. In summary, only 5 of 500 embryos would be useful for scientific research. How outrageous that we would destroy 495 lives so that we could get 5 stem cell lines. That is absolutely outrageous.
The motion deals with pre-existing embryos. It says that those pre-existing embryos cannot be touched unless all of the informed consent provisions that are currently in the CIHR guidelines have been complied with. The bill is silent on the status of pre-existing embryos, embryos that exist before the bill comes into force. We need some guidelines on what happens to those human beings that presently exist but are frozen.
Motion No. 82 basically says that if researchers applies for an application to use embryos for research, they have to provide the reasons why they are choosing embryonic stem cells and not another source of stem cells. The onus is placed on the researcher. Presently the bill puts the onus on the agency somehow to determine that. It should not try to glean or guess what the researcher wants to do. The researcher should have the onus on demonstrating that they can only use embryonic stem cells not other stem cells.
Motion No. 83 deals with how many embryos are out there. Dr. Baylis has been hired to do a survey of the 24 infertility clinics in Canada to determine how many embryos are out there. Her work is being funded by the Canadian stem cell network and it is funded by the Government of Canada. Therefore we are doing a survey on how many embryos are out there.
Dr. Françoise Baylis believes that there are not enough embryos out there to sustain meaningful research. My motion says that if there is a conclusion that there are not enough embryos out there to do meaningful research, then no licences should be granted to do any research on any embryos. We need those for people to have children. We should not use them for research. No human being should be created or destroyed as part of an experiment.
Motion No. 84 says that there should be no licence without consent of the gamete providers or the embryo provider, unless it is in accordance with the CIHR guidelines. I would be happy to provide members with a copy of those guidelines.
Motion No. 85 says that if the applicants are not people, because a company or an agency could get an licence, they have to designate a person who would be responsible for responding or who would be accountable and to whom they could talk. My motion would say that a person still must be a person who would qualify to be a licensee in his or her own right. We cannot just have anybody getting a licence to play around with human embryos.
Motion No. 86 would let us establish a stem cell bank. It means that if any researchers produce stem cell lines, that a copy of these very replicative stem cell lines can be donated back, as a condition of licensing, to the agency. Should it patent its stem cell lines, the agency still has, not subject to patent, stem cell lines that it could share with other researchers so that it could continue the research and reduce the number of embryos that would have to be destroyed to get more stem cell lines.
Motion No. 88 basically establishes limits. This is a women's health issue for me. It has to establish limits on how many drugs can be given to women. Right now, Dr. Baylis, other doctors and medical professionals who came before the health committee said that we were already drugging women to the max. These drugs are like chemotherapy to women. It changes their bodies and makes them hyperovulate so that they make available many more eggs than just the one they normally would produce every month. Now they are harvesting as many as 25 eggs, when probably only 10 would be absolutely necessary for reproductive purposes for IVF, which means that implicitly they must be producing surplus embryos for research. The bill says that eggs cannot be produced for research, but it is happening anyway.
We need to prescribe limits on how many eggs can be harvested, how many eggs can be fertilized and how many eggs can be implanted. They are implanting, for example, five to seven embryos in a woman who wants IVF. If more than one gets implanted and takes, then they do a fetal reduction. They go in and kill that implanted embryo because the party only wants one child, not two. We are implanting too many embryos into women. We have to set limits. Right now the experts say that it probably only takes three or four, based upon the level of technology that they have right now. We should have limits. It is a women's health issue. It is a life issue. It is a moral and ethical issue.
Motion No. 89 basically changes a word from “may” to “shall”. I do not believe that this should be optional. We either do something or not. Members might want to look at the issue. I believe it should be mandatory, that we shall do something.
Finally, Motion No. 90 adds a clause which basically says that certain decisions made by the agency may be appealed.
I believe I have kept within my time so that the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre can have ample time to make her points. I thank the members for their interest and I ask for their support on the motions in this group.