Mr. Speaker, you sound a little like an auctioneer, and I will take the five. Sold, Mr. Speaker.
I appreciate the grace of the House in extending my time. I know that other members who have been given an extra ten minutes have not put into this the time and energy that we have had the privilege and pleasure of doing over the past year and a half. This is a very important piece of legislation.
I have talked briefly about the idea of surrogacy in this piece of legislation, so if I have only five more minutes I would like to move forward and talk about what would happen with the other piece of these amendments, which talk about the idea of buying and selling of either fetal tissue or embryos or any of these combinations. It is very important that we discern whether it is appropriate for us as a nation to be able to buy or sell fetal tissue. We know that it is happening in the United States. It is really interesting when we start discerning what might be happening in the area of fetal tissue or the area of tissue donation.
Many of us are aware of what happened with the ear bank in Canada, which was just closed down because of not having the right regulations and standards in place, with things being inappropriately done. I had an opportunity to sit on a plane this past weekend with an individual who was involved with that whole process. Some of the things he told me with regard to the breach of standards in the area of tissue donation would raise the hair on the back of one's neck. This can be very appalling.
In fact, he was telling me how embryonic stem cells could be used in the area of islet transplants. He also used the example of the Edmonton protocol for diabetes. For that procedure alone, some researchers have been offered $2 million U.S. by individuals wanting to have that procedure done to their wives. There are examples of how procedures can be bought and sold and how that can be applied to tissue donation or to the area of embryos. This is alive and well in many places in North America and is alive and well in Canada. We have to fight against that.
This piece of legislation gives us the opportunity to either put a stop to this or allow it to continue. I do not believe that Canadians want to live in a society where this is allowed and I believe that most Canadians do not understand the repercussions of this piece of legislation because it is so complex. I do not blame anyone for not being able to follow it, and I have been absorbed in it as much as anyone could possibly be because of the work done in committee over the last two years. In committee, 100 amendments for changes were tried. The 70 that we are working with now in report stage are not here by accident but because this piece of legislation is flawed. If it is put forward in its present state, it will fail Canadians because it will not reflect their values and will be exploited.
I will give the House another example of this because the United Kingdom is a little further advanced. In fact, the United Kingdom is about 10 years in advance. In that 10 year period, it started with a piece of legislation similar to this, with no therapeutic cloning and no reproductive cloning. The United Kingdom now allows therapeutic cloning and the possible creation of an embryo solely for the purpose of research. What ethical argument will we have if this legislation allows us to destroy an embryo for the sake of research? What ethical argument will we have if we are allowed to grow it for 14 days, kill it, and take the stem cells from it to try to do research, especially since that research is a long way from being proven effective? There is no proof of it working in animals yet. Nonetheless, the United Kingdom is allowing that now. What ethical argument will we stand on to say we cannot create them solely for the purpose of research?
We know that if we harvest them before they go into a refrigeration state the potential of them surviving the 14 days and being viable to grow stem cells is much more successful than it is now. It is only about a 5% success rate for those that are frozen and that this piece of legislation deals with. This piece of legislation says we should use them rather than destroy them, but let me say that this is a slippery slope. It is very dangerous for us to move to that degree. If we do not understand it as a nation and as a society, we will fail society because we will not have informed it of where we will likely go.
I am very nervous about where this piece of legislation is going, and in particular where this group of amendments is going, because it would allow the commodification of human life. It would allow for the buying and selling of fetal tissue, for the buying and selling of embryos, and for the potential for those embryos to be transferred to different ownership. We have to say that this is either just a group of cells and tissue or it is the beginning of human life.
Biologically, we cannot say anything other than “this is the beginning of human life”. How much value we place on human life at that stage is a fair argument and a fair debate which we could and should have here, but whether it is human life is not arguable. It is just a fact of biology. If the House fails to protect human life at its most vulnerable stage, then who is going to stand up and protect human life at that stage? What other safeguards do we have if the House fails to do its job?
I do not think it reflects Canadian values to be able to take the most vulnerable in society and bring in a piece of legislation that will deliberately destroy them. That is not a Canadian value. It is just that most Canadians do not understand this, especially when there is an alternative, non-embryonic stem cells, which are a great opportunity for tremendous research.
I have had people from the Canadian Diabetes Association and people concerned with Parkinson's and muscular dystrophy in my office talking about how impressed they are with the use of embryonic stem cell research. As I told them in my office, it has yet to be seen that there is any proof that the embryonic stem cells are any more viable. In fact, there are many more problems with them because they are so elastic that at this present time they cannot be triggered into growing what they are intended to grow. Until we see it in the embryos coming from animals, we certainly do not have the science there to be able to move into an area of using human life as that kind of an experiment. We should be very cautious in this area.
Growing an organ from an adult stem cell, or a non-embryonic stem cell, was proven this last summer in July in Minnesota. They have been able to take those stem cells from bone marrow and grow them into any organ in the body. That is very exciting, because there is no ethical dilemma there. We can save the nation the gut-wrenching decision of being able to say that we have to destroy human lives for the sake of saving them.
One member of Parliament told me that his brother is dying and he knows that embryonic stem cells could save his life, if the scientists are right, which they are not, but he said, “Never destroy one baby for my life”. Many Canadians would feel that same way.
I am saying that in many countries in the world human life is very cheap. It is not very valuable. We are at the brink of war as a nation, as a world, and we see that some of the things going on around the world are detestable. But a fundamental Canadian value is to place a value on human life. This piece of legislation would move us into an area that would destroy that value. Because of that we need to have the appropriate amendments in order to be able to put forward a piece of legislation that would reflect Canadian values and limit the amount of research done, research that would be in the best interests of all Canadians. Because of that, we say that some of these amendments absolutely have to be put forward and have to pass or this piece of legislation will falter and will not be appropriate for Canadians.