CANADIAN REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES BILL C-13

1. C-13 Does Not Prohibit Cloning — Feb. 27/03
“Bill C-13 does not ban cloning. Bill C-13, on the most important aspect of reproductive technologies and related research, does not ban cloning fully, finally, full stop”.

“The new definition says that a human clone is an embryo that is a result of the manipulation of human reproductive material or an in vitro embryo contains a diploid set of chromosomes obtained from a single, and that is very important, living or deceased human being, fetus or embryo.”

“The addition of the word “single” in the definition of clone does not cover all forms of cloning. It does not cover pronuclei transfer. It does not prohibit that kind of cloning. It does not prohibit the formation of chimera and backbreeding. It does not prohibit mitochondria transfer.”

“The research community is saying it needs to use somatic cell nuclear transfer, therapeutic cloning, because it quite frankly cannot get over the problem of immune rejection by using embryonic stem cells.”

“Seven days after this bill was tabled in the House, Dr. Alan Bernstein, president of the CIHR, was on a TV program. It was a business program. He was talking about the importance of commercialization of genetic technologies and why we should have somatic cell nuclear transfer. That was just one week after the bill was tabled, and his agency is the one that is going to determine which research is done”.

2. C-13 Would Allow So-Called Clone and Kill and Organ Harvesting — April 7/03
Bill C-13 “would allow cloned human embryos to be implanted in the uterus at the embryonic stage and then be harvested for research at any time from the embryonic period through the ninth month of gestation — anytime during the pregnancy of a woman. Not only could researchers get stem cells from that unborn child, they could also harvest organs from that unborn child.”

3. The Problem of Regulations — Feb. 27/03
“The other aspect is that a qualifier is in virtually every clause in the controlled activity section stating that it would be subject to the regulations or as in accordance with the regulations, and it probably occurs more than any other statement in the entire bill. In fact public policy positions on key elements of the bill are buried in the regulations.”

“…there is another clause in the bill which states that any new regulations, after the initial wave of regulations, or any amendments to existing regulations need not come before Parliament. As a consequence, the bill currently states that we could put forward only a handful of housekeeping regulations in the first wave, and then immediately thereafter come forward with substantive regulations which would change fundamentally the purpose and the public policy statements of the bill.”

“The bill is an omnibus bill. It puts upfront the ban on cloning, which it still does not do, then it tacks on to the end regulating fertility clinics, regulating research in Canada and setting up a brand new bureaucratic agency without any expertise and without any teeth to do the job of Parliament. The bill also says that if we change any regulations down the road, Parliament has no right to look at those regulations.”

4. Problem With An Omnibus Bill — Feb. 27/03
“What is happening in this bill, like every omnibus bill, is that it buries a lot of the dirty laundry in the back and puts members in a quandary. I want to vote for banning cloning but if I vote in favour of the bill to ban cloning, I am also voting in favour of doing a bunch of things are wrong.”

5. C-13 Allows Women to be Exploited as Embryo Factories — Feb. 27/03
“We should note that the fertility industry habitually harvests more eggs from women and creates more human embryos than are reasonably necessary for in vitro fertilization. Women can be drugged to the max, and they are based on expert testimony before the committee, and a fertility clinic can harvest up to 25 eggs. However they only need three to five eggs for the first fertility treatment under IVF. All those eggs would be fertilized and those that are not necessary for the first attempt at IVF would be frozen… The point is, in vitro fertilization as part of the normal course of its operation does create surplus embryos.”