Mr. Speaker, I want to say at the outset that this is, for the most part, a good bill. It is a bill that sets out to place a legal, ethical and regulatory framework around very complex research and a technological set of new ideas that have come about in science.
As a physician I know only too well the agony and heartbreak that some couples face because they are unable to have children, to reproduce. The stress placed on these couples by society, by family expectations, and by their own desires and their dreams for children for the continuity of their family line, is very emotional.
New reproductive technologies and some of the research we are talking about in the bill are able to help couples like these in many ways. In effect, therefore, the good that the bill can do, the good that these technologies and this research can do, however, must be balanced by the recognition of the harm it could do to society as a whole. The bill sets out to find that fine balance and I think it has done so very well.
For instance, the commodification and the commercialization of reproduction carries with it the risk, as we of course have heard everyone speak about, of exploitation, especially of vulnerable young women. Young women who need money, who are in penurious circumstances, and not so young women who are in penurious circumstances, could be exploited for use as surrogates or as donors. For instance, because of the authority figures within a family, a young woman could be made to become a surrogate whether that young woman wishes to or not. Clearly one must set guidelines in which we do not allow for exploitation, in which we do not allow for commodification, and in which we do not allow commercialization to create an incentive for exploitation. I think the bill has done that.
Many people have suggested that donors of ova or sperm and surrogates should be driven purely by altruism. That is wonderful, but that is not what happens in the real world. The bill recognizes that realism. It recognizes that we cannot only ask people out of the goodness of their hearts to donate without protecting them in some ways. I think that the bill, to some extent, allows for that. In fact, it allows for the anonymity of a donor while at the same time ensuring that the elements of a family history and a medical history are there to protect the future well-being of any children born of these technologies. I think that the bill is in fact very good in all of these aspects.
Where I believe the bill falls short is on the issue of surrogacy. Surrogacy, unlike some of these other interventions, is not simply a donation. In surrogacy, a woman agrees to carry a child to term. Altruism alone does not play a part in this, because we all know that inherent within a pregnancy there are risks, risks that are expected and risks that may not be expected.
In Motion No. 51, I have suggested that we move to recognize some of those risks. If a surrogate faces any sort of complication due to pregnancy, such as toxemia, abruptio placenta or any one of those threatening problems that can occur during a pregnancy, and needs to take time off work, she should be compensated and reimbursed. At the moment the bill only allows for reimbursement of actual expenses such as taxis, going to the dentist, getting food, et cetera. We need to look realistically at some of the risks that could occur and ensure that the surrogate, the mother and the child are protected so that a healthy child will be born and so that women do not take undue risks. If we do not protect them, we will find that we will be able to say in the bill that surrogacy is allowed but it will never happen in fact, because no one would want to put themselves at that kind of risk if they are not assured that the risk is taken into consideration in the bill.
Similarly, I also want to say that in Motion No. 29 I am clarifying something that is extremely important. When we look at some of the issues of technology or issues dealing with sterility, surrogacy or any of the technologies involved here, there quite often is a need for informed consent from the patient, the couple needing the services, or the surrogate, a need to have counselling by a physician or by a legal counsel to allow them to make the right decisions, to allow them to make informed consent. Informed consent is a very important part of any kind of medical intervention. I think this is important and I do not believe it is very clear in the bill. I think that Motion No. 29 would clarify it very clearly so that physicians and lawyers doing their jobs on informed consent would not feel that they would be liable to prosecution.
The parts of the bill, however, that deal with research, cloning and stem cells et cetera, have been subjected to a great deal of misunderstanding and I would say misinformation, but I would sometimes believe it is disinformation. I hope that this is because the complexity of the science is often too great for some people to really grasp it clearly.
For example, paragraph 5(1)(a) states:
No person shall knowingly (a) create a human clone, or transplant a human clone into a human being;
It works in tandem with the definition of a human clone that states:
“human clone” means an embryo that... contains a diploid set of chromosomes obtained from a single--living or deceased--human being, foetus or embryo.
A diploid set of chromosomes means the full set of 46 chromosomes that are present in every cell of an embryo, in fact, in every cell of each and every human being. Some members of the House raised concerns about this definition not being watertight. I would like to speak to and zero in on some of those concerns.
It is suggested that it is problematic to define a clone as an embryo that replicates the complete set of chromosomes of another single human organism. Members raised the spectre of cloning techniques that use more than one source of DNA, but this is not science. This is bad science. To create a human clone a scientist must, by definition, obtain all 46 chromosomes from the same organism but not necessarily from the same cell within that organism. That is what a clone is, a copy of an entire human being.
For example, if we wanted to clone you, Madam Speaker, we would need all of your chromosomes, not just some of them. It does not matter if we get the chromosomes from one of your cells or from a handful of them, as long as the complete set of chromosomes comes from your body we will have created a cloned Madam Speaker. But if we mix your chromosomes with the chromosomes of someone else we will not be able to produce a clone.
It is suggested that the bill's cloning ban would not cover newer approaches such as mitochondrial cloning, pronuclei transfer or parthenogenesis to create a clone.
Let me say for the record that it is not possible to create a cloned human being from cloned mitochondria. A mitochondrion is a little structure found within every cell. It supplies energy to the cell, a sort of genetic battery. Mitochondria have their own DNA separate from the 46 chromosomes found in the nucleus. We cannot create an entire cloned organism by cloned mitochondria. It is like saying that if we cloned the battery we could get the whole energizer bunny. Well, we cannot.
On the other hand, it is in theory possible to create a human clone through pronuclei transfer. There is a pronucleus containing 23 chromosomes in every human egg and sperm. Following fertilization the two pronuclei will come together and provide the 46 chromosomes of the developing human organism. Using two pronuclei from the same human organism would, theoretically, produce a clone. Such a procedure would obviously therefore be covered by the human cloning prohibition found in the bill and thus would not be allowed in Canada.
There was concern about some things that are not possible and some things that are already prohibited in the bill. Bill C-13 would ban the parthenogenetic creation of a cloned human embryo. Parthenogenesis is simply a method for asexually reproducing an entire human organism. It is not a means of creating sperm and eggs as Motion No. 27 wrongly suggests.
I want to address the suggestion that the cloning prohibition would not ban chimera. This is in fact quite true. Chimeras are not clones. By definition they consist of cells drawn from more than one entity and chimeras are specifically banned under paragraph 5(1)(i).
The cloning ban in Bill C-13 is comprehensive and it is scientifically sound. Unless there be any further doubts, allow me to quote Dr. Patricia Baird, an internationally respected geneticist, who as many members will know chaired the royal commission on reproductive technology. Professor Baird said:
Based on an incorrect understanding of the science, some have suggested that the bill doesn't ban cloning, but in fact on careful reading it clearly does.
Madam Speaker, a lot of my colleagues have been given an extra five minutes. I would wrap this up if I could be given another three minutes, please.