Mr. Speaker, it is indeed my pleasure to speak on this group of amendments. I would like to follow up on some of the comments the minister made, because obviously we are looking for the right legislation that will guide the agency in the future. The agency is perhaps the most important piece of the bill, because it will be deciding on how far we will go as a nation, on the ethics of the nation, and on what we will allow our scientists to do research on and when we will say hold it, that is going too far. In essence it will be drawing the line in the sand between what we see as being appropriate and not appropriate.
Excitement was caused because of remarks and some of the amendments with regard to the agency and who would sit on the agency. This becomes a very important issue. The minister thinks it is too broad. The minister thinks that if we put in this amendment it would be so broad that it would eliminate anyone, even a plumber or an electrician who might work in one of the facilities. That is truly not the intent and it was not the intent of the committee. It all comes down to how it is applied. That is true with so much that happens in this country in law: it is how the law is applied.
If only the minister would take the committee's recommendations and understand that our concern was that the agency has to be above reproach. It has to capture the confidence of the nation if it is going to deal with these ethical issues. If it is going to do that, then we must have in place some limits as to who sits on the board. We must we make sure that they are appropriate people and there is no conflict of interest of any kind. An appropriate position, if the minister feels that this is too broad, would be to amend it to make it somewhat narrower but not to open it wide, and I would suggest that this is where we are at right now.
I have 10 minutes and there are a lot of amendments, but I want to talk about the agency a bit because it is very important. I have just mentioned the makeup of the agency, but because the makeup of the agency is quite important we also have to decide on what the agency is and is not going to allow.
Motions Nos. 88, 89 and 90 are about these differences, about what some of the limits should be and where the line should be drawn for the agency with regard to infertility clinics, such as how many eggs should be harvested.
We have the example that from a woman hyper-ovulated for in vitro fertilization there can be as many as 30 eggs. Should those 30 eggs all need to be fertilized to be able to impregnate? The intent is to impregnate the individual who has difficulty having a child, so how many times should this be allowed? Is it in the best interests of the individual? Do the people have all the information available when they undergo this procedure? It is a very costly procedure, costing $5,000 to $6,000 per procedure. Should there be limits on the number of eggs that are allowed to go into a womb at one particular time? Some witnesses said that two should be the limit. Others said that there are examples of up to seven at one time; hopefully one, two, three or four will catch and they will just abort the others. There should be some guidelines in that area.
The lines that are drawn become very important, so I think it is appropriate that there are amendments in these areas to give the agency some clear direction as to where it should go. As a society, we are crossing a line we have never crossed before. We are crossing a line to where we are taking not just material, not just cells, but human life, growing it in a Petri dish and destroying it in order to, hopefully, create cures down the road.
That brings me to the other subject, because I have spoken with some of these individuals who have great hope in these cures. I have spoken with them in my office in depth over the last two years as we have tried to discern this legislation and how we should proceed. Some of them were with the Parkinson's society, for example, and have great hope because of the media and a lot of the scientists saying that great cures can be found in this area. I would say that some are false hopes.
Yet we have seen actual cures in Parkinson's from adult stem cells, not embryonic stem cells, even in the last year. Our caution in this legislation is to pull back for three years on the embryonic side to allow for non-embryonic stem cell research. This would give scientists an opportunity to move a little further down this road. I do not say that because a Parkinson's patient or a leukemia patient was cured last year by non-embryonic cells from an umbilical cord. I say it because we had startling experiments last summer on bone marrow stem cells. It is suspected that bone marrow stem cells can be turned into any organ in the body.
That is the whole drive for the embryonic stem cell. The argument for going with the embryonic stem cell is that it is elastic. Its elasticity will allow it to grow any organ in the body. The problem is they cannot trigger it so the elasticity of it is also a problem because it can grow into anything, and it usually does. That has been the experiment in animals. Brains, hair and gut grow in the same cells and it creates a tumour rather than being triggered to grow into the appropriate organ.
There are two pluses in adult stem cells. First, there is no ethical dilemma in taking bone marrow stem cells. Second, then they can be injected back into the body and this require no anti-rejection drugs. There is a double positive outcome from using non-embryonic stem cells. Patients injected with embryonic stem cells will be on anti-rejection drugs for the rest of their lives. There is a tremendous opportunity on the embryonic side for the pharmaceutical industry because it would have to provide those anti-rejection drugs.
The only other way to get around that is to go to therapeutic cloning and the bill prohibits that. The whole idea of cloning is repulsive. There has been a lot of talk over the last while about the Raelian cult which supposedly has cloned up to three individuals. We have yet to hear whether that has been a media ploy or whether it has actually happened. It really does not matter. The point is we have no law to prohibit it so we encourage that this go forward. However we hope that all members will seriously look at some of the amendments to make this legislation the best in the world. Canadians deserve that.
The United Kingdom has worked under an agency and regulatory framework for the last decade. However it can be a very slippery slope when a nation gets to the point where it is prepared to destroy human life for research. The UK now has opened it up to therapeutic cloning where stem cells can be used solely for the purpose of research. Instead of putting leftover stem cells in a freezer, as this bill would deem necessary, they are created fresh because there is only about a 2% to 5% success rate in the thawing process or growing them in a Petrie dish, which this bill would allow for use in research.
If we pass the bill the way it is, three years from now, when it is reviewed, we will have scientists coming to us and telling us it is unethical that so many of these cells die in the process so they should be able to use them fresh. That is the very slippery slope we are on now. The next step will be reproductive cloning which will come right on its heels. Who knows where this will go? We have some examples from Great Britain over the last decade.
It is very important that we seriously and soberly look at the word necessary in this legislation. The legislation says that only if it is necessary will we get into embryonic stem cell research but we do not define “necessary”. It is a blank cheque.
At committee, I asked Dr. Bernstein, the president of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, what he would see as being not necessary for research and could not he give me an example of that. He said that he did not know. That means it is all necessary. If it is all necessary then it is a blank cheque. We had better think seriously before we accept this legislation the way it is.