HEAL Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON HEALTH

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA SANTÉ

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, June 3, 1999

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[English]

The Chairman (Mr. Joseph Volpe (Eglinton—Lawrence, Lib.)): The meeting is called to order, pursuant to the order of reference of March 8, 1999, reconsideration of clause 1 of Bill C-247, an act to amend the Criminal Code (genetic manipulation).

[Translation]

We have a number of witnesses this morning. One of them is well known to committee members: she is Ms. Suzanne Rozell Scorsone, a former Commissioner of the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies and Director of Communications and of the Catholic Family Life Office of the Archdiocese of Toronto.

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With us as well are the Vice-President of the Canadian College of Medical Geneticists, Dr. Ronald F. Carter, and Ms. Fiona Miller of the Feminist Alliance on Genetic and Reproductive Technologies.

[English]

We will be joined shortly by Dr. Margaret Somerville, who is Gale Professor of Law at that university. Welcome to the three of you—and the four, when she comes.

My colleagues are usually here in great numbers. Madam Picard will not feel offended if she doesn't see a lot of members opposite her, because some of them have already left for some electoral duties. However, I hope that the government side is more than ably represented by Dr. Ovid Jackson—Dr. refers to his scholarly background. I want to assure the witnesses that the transcripts go to each and every one of the colleagues, so whatever transpires today forms part of the considerations members will receive—they are seized of the issue.

Madame Picard, of course, has been down this road before with Bill C-47 when I believe you appeared, Ms. Scorsone, and you were there as well, Ms. Miller. Dr. Carter wasn't at those hearings. At any rate, I recall the two of you. Of course Madam Picard was there for those, and we had some preliminary witnesses the first time Bill C-247 came through. As you are aware, I'm sure, Bill C-247 received approval in the House, came before the committee, went back to the House, and is now here again.

I will now turn the floor over to each of you in turn for about five minutes apiece. I'll try not to see the clock too accurately. Then we'll go to questions and answers. Because I don't expect a great number of members today, I'm hoping my colleagues will allow me to be a little more flexible and generous with the questioning time.

Is that okay, Madam? Madam Desjarlais, is that okay too? Okay.

Ms. Rozell Scorsone.

Dr. Suzanne Rozell Scorsone (Former Commissioner of the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies; Director of Communications and of Catholic Family Life, Archdiocese of Toronto): I came to the royal commission because my doctorate is in social anthropology, so I was able to bring social science and the analysis of the impact on human groups to what we were doing, as well as an understanding of the physical aspect, because of course anthropologists also have to understand medical things and the operation of the human body.

Looking at this bill, it's excellent in principle. I was so glad to see this brought forward again, having been through the great frustration of seeing Bill C-47 nearly happen and then die when five minutes of voting would have taken care of it. This bill takes one area that was in the larger bill and one area within a vast field, which I'm sure is of concern to all of you, and brings them forward now. It has to be placed in the context of everything we hope will come forward when new legislation, which is mooted, is brought forward at the end of the year.

So this is an excellent opportunity to deal with the issue in itself, but also to look at certain issues that will be relevant as the discussion of whatever comes out in the proposed legislation appears—toward the end of the year, one hears. It's also in that context that I'll speak.

These issues cut to the heart of what it means to be a human being and how we behave toward one another—not only toward those who are living, but toward those who are to come into being. There are essential questions about the nature of humanity here. Do we treat human beings as ends in themselves, as industrial products, or perhaps as ultimate persons in themselves, but nonetheless to be industrialized in their production, or possibly used for industrial purposes? This raises essential issues.

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I note here in proposed paragraph 286.1(1)(a) there are two aspects. There is the manipulation of an ovum, zygote, or embryo to produce another just like it, or for implantation. That both should be there is terribly important, because on the one hand, most of us look upon somatic cloning, or even the cloning of embryos as being for fertility purposes only. Increasingly, it's becoming clear—it actually has been known to those in the field for some time—there's also a good deal more that could be done with it if it were permitted, and I hope it will not be.

Embryos could be cloned, for example, and used to get stem cells that would be pluripotent or even perhaps totipotent. Then they could be used to produce tissues, such as eyelid cell tissue, liver tissue, brain tissue and so on. They could be manipulated to provide those tissues. It could be a vast industry using human embryos as an industrial source and resource for tissues for treatment.

Treatment is obviously a good thing, but the question is, where do you get the things you use for treatment? There are other alternatives that exist now, and other alternatives that could be used in the future. So why place ourselves in a position of doing something that is ethically highly dubious, to say the least, and something I would hope would be prohibited outright, when there are other alternatives to do the same good thing? The end does not justify the means.

A good objective ought not to be furthered by something that uses human beings as industrial resources. It's possible to get even brain stem cells now to then be cultivated in vitro to be used for treatment of neural disorders. It is possible to get blood stem cells now.

If enough money and research were put into it, I'm sure there would be the possibility of taking somatic cells and even making them pluripotent—removing the specialization and making it possible to use them in a variety of contexts.

There's also more and more research into the use of animal cells. If the antigenicity problem or immune response can be dealt with, there is no barrier to using them in treatment in humans on the ethical level, any more than there is in using animals for food or to shoe our feet, for that matter, as long as they are treated humanely and within the norms we consider to be acceptable.

There is no ultimate reason for taking a short and dirty route to get cells for a good treatment, when it is possible to do this in ways that are acceptable to the entire population. It's also important to note that what Canada does here will be taken as an example by many other societies. We're not doing this alone. If this barrier of treating human beings as industrial resources is breached here, no doubt it will be breached elsewhere. This is very important.

Also, going to proposed paragraph 286.1(1)(b), the prohibition of germ line transmission is very important. In theory, it would be nice to say that if we have a treatment, why not make the treatment of disease go for many generations. The difficulty is, there is no way of knowing what the risks are. It's acceptable to treat someone who has a disorder now. If it doesn't work out, the damage is limited to that person. But once it's in the germ line, you don't know where it will go or for how long. It seems to me it is unethical to use the next generation, an unconsenting person, in effect as a guinea pig for a treatment. People should be treated as ends in themselves.

To move on further, I am very happy with proposed subsection 286.1(3): “No person shall offer consideration to any person....”. This is the principle of non-commercialization of human reproduction. It was in Bill C-47 and I rejoiced to see it. I'm sure all the members of royal commission, the former commissioners, rejoiced to see it. I hope, in this and in whatever legislation comes forward in the fall, it will be there front and centre that there should be no commercialization of human reproduction.

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What I'm not certain of.... This is directed at the Criminal Code. My understanding is that the legislation in the fall will be directed to health law, with criminal sanctions attached. That is an area for Parliament to decide. You have the best modes of knowing what will be effective. What is key to me is that it be effective, that it have teeth, that it be sufficient to deter. The precise modalities I leave to you.

The Chairman: Ms. Scorsone, you have accomplished something that all members at the table will be envious of, I have no doubt, and that is that you have been able to make an announcement that some members may not have been aware of, and that is that there is other legislation that this committee will consider—in the fall, did you say? I don't know.

Dr. Suzanne Rozell Scorsone: Well, The Globe and Mail knows.

The Chairman: The Globe and Mail has a bug in this room. It has a bug in the minister's office. It has a bug in caucus—ours, anyway. I don't know whether it has in everybody else's.

Thank you very much.

Ms. Miller.

Ms. Fiona Miller (Feminist Alliance on Genetic and Reproductive Technologies): Thank you.

Thank you very much for inviting me here this morning. I'm here as a member of the Feminist Alliance on Genetic and Reproductive Technologies. That's a feminist collective based in Toronto with virtual links around the country and with strong connections to the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, who cannot be here because of their AGM this weekend.

Let me begin by sketching the framework of analysis that we bring to bear in considering these issues. First, while we acknowledge and respect the legitimacy of the desire for children among individual infertile couples, individuals and couples who have infertility, and other others who need to use assisted conception technologies to have children, we see that there are broader issues at stake here.

Let me just name some of the three diverse constituencies that have clear substantive equality and human rights concerns in relation to these technologies: namely, women—and in that I would include women's reproductive rights; people with disabilities; and persons who are the results of such technologies, otherwise and really inappropriately termed children, because of course they grow up and they have human rights concerns that we should address.

In brief, we support this bill despite its limitations because of the need for federal action and for national standards in the first place and because of the need for clear and criminally enforceable prohibitions in some instances. We're concerned that the regulatory impulse that is currently the chief concern, and for good reason, of the health policy branch is potentially leading us away from drawing very clear lines that actually prohibit. One of the things that is to my mind good about this bill, despite all the concerns about the Criminal Code and its use, is that it does contemplate very clear limits, sanctions, and prohibitions. We can't just create a regulatory system.

The Chairman: Let me interrupt you for a second, Ms. Miller. I have to ask you to speak a little more slowly so that the translation people can keep pace. Thank you.

Ms. Fiona Miller: Okay. This is a constant problem.

I was just identifying our concern about the need for prohibition. One of the concerns with a regulatory impulse that does not contemplate prohibitions is that we create a system whereby it is simply a fine-based set of restrictions. In other words, failure to comply with regulations becomes simply the cost of doing business, and I think we do need to seriously contemplate firm prohibitions. This does that. We applaud that.

Finally, we support this bill because of the clearly abhorrent nature of the practices contemplated. Now, I'm not certain whether or not the amendment to remove section 2 passed in the House, but I would speak in favour of both section 1 and section 2 restricting cloning and germ line and of course the other sections.

Let me briefly identify some of the problems with these practices that we all are aware of. There are, of course, significant health and safety concerns to those being born and, as we see with mammalian cloning, also to the female mammals that gestate in some instances. This of course has bearing on the unjustified nature of the sort of human experimentation one would be pursuing.

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I copy Dr. Scorsone in her faith that we need to consider the people who are the result of these practices as ends in themselves, not means to an end. These practices really do contemplate people who are the result of these technologies as products to be designed and developed for the benefit of current actors only.

There is also here the problematic gene mystique, if I can call it that, that builds on an unwarranted faith in a simplistic and outdated model of gene action that I'm sure Dr. Carter could speak to as well. For example, cloning is particularly dangerous not because it produces identical persons. There is no such thing as identical persons. One of the great threats of cloning is that it produces expectations of identity and children who have that expectation imposed upon them.

Finally, these technologies—especially germ-line genetic engineering—are premised on a distorted view of human disease, disability, and difference, one which supposes that these conditions are solely or primarily biological and that their eradication is an unqualified good. This belief is profoundly out of touch with the lived experience of people with disabilities, who do not see their life experience with the negative eyes that able-bodied persons have when they consider these things.

In closing, let me say that we recognize the very significant limitations of the bill with regard to comprehensiveness and enforcement mechanisms. Much more than this is needed, as Madam Picard would be the first to acknowledge. Yet we see value in moving ahead with this limited piece of legislation, given that no single bill is going to be sufficient. And in that regard, I want to draw your attention to the fact that the RGTs, or reproductive and genetic technologies, are not isolated activities but are part of the larger health care system and are reliant on its adequate operation.

At the moment we are very concerned that the most minimum requirement for the regulation of RGTs, that is to say, safety, is not being met. Recent revelations of the failure of the Health Protection Branch to oversee Canadian sperm banks demonstrate that RGTs are part of a systematic failure to protect the public interest within that branch of the department, and the current transition process—I know this is a sideline issue—seems to be moving in absolutely the wrong direction to correct that problem.

My point is, yes, this is a limited piece of legislation, but if we are seriously going to regulate the RGTs in a comprehensive manner, no one piece of legislation will do it. The Health Protection Branch is a key element too, and I draw that to the attention of the health committee, as I know you are well aware of these issues. Therefore, much is needed. Inaction is not a solution. This is a good preliminary first step.

The Chairman: Thank you, Ms. Miller.

I wonder if you'd just clarify something for me and maybe for others as well. You mentioned something about the transition process. To what were you referring?

Ms. Fiona Miller: I was referring to the Health Protection Branch transition that was announced, I guess, this summer. It's a two-year review of all the legislation. Its intent is to create sort of an omnibus revision of the Food and Drugs Act. It has been characterized by some editorials as transition to nowhere. That is what I've heard.

The Chairman: I'm glad you clarified that they are editorials and not necessarily statements of fact.

Dr. Carter.

Dr. Ronald F. Carter (Vice-President, Canadian College of Medical Geneticists): Thank you. Thank you for holding this hearing. Thank you for inviting me to participate as a representative of the Canadian College of Medical Geneticists. I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to convey the concerns of my medical and scientific colleagues across Canada.

I'm a director of a regional genetic laboratory that does prenatal testing. I'm also vice-president of a college that I'll refer to as the CCMG. The CCMG was established to develop and ensure adherence to high standards in the delivery of medical genetic services in Canada. We ensure that our members achieve and uphold a high standard of training, competence, and professional behaviour. We also provide opinion and advice to other medical specialities and organizations. But above all, and I have to emphasize this, we uphold the principle that we will act in the best interest of the patients at all times. We will disclose relevant information, as requested, and we provide advice and care in a non-directive and supportive manner to our patients.

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My first comment that I really would like to emphasize is that we consider any attempt to clone a human being as completely unacceptable. We cannot think of a reason why it would be morally, ethically, medically, or scientifically justifiable. In that context, we are in complete agreement with the expressed intention of this bill.

I'm here, however, to try to ensure that this bill is not passed into law. We believe that this legislation is not enforceable and that it could be used to stop legitimate and accepted medical practice and scientific research.

The primary problem is that the wording of the bill is neither sufficiently exact nor sufficiently comprehensive to delineate between those new reproductive techniques that are necessary and useful for bona fide medical care and those that could be used for the unacceptable intent of human cloning.

The second problem is that there is no framework to instruct authorities in the desirable interpretation and enforcement of the legislation. Therefore, it may not be useful in achieving its stated aim.

A third problem is that the bill is open to abuse or punitive enforcement. That would be similarly unacceptable, because it would threaten legitimate medical care and research.

I'll give you one brief example. In paragraph (1)(a) it refers to implantation in a woman. Well, there's a recent British report that it's very possible in future to implant embryos into a man. I'm not sure I personally would want to go through with that, and I can't see a reason why somebody would want to do that, but it will be possible, probably within five years, to do so.

I want to illustrate the medical context for a few minutes. Infertility and genetic disease are common. There are literally thousands of different genetic diseases, about 9,000 recognized, categorized genes at last count. Genetic disorders cause about 30% of all pediatric hospital admissions to tertiary care facilities like the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.

Only twenty years ago, Dr. Charles Scriver, of Montreal, estimated that the treatment of genetic disease was fully effective in only 10% of cases, and it was completely ineffective in over half of all cases. This situation is changing. Thanks to a revolution in diagnostic and treatment capability, we are in sight of a new age of being able to effectively treat and/or prevent genetic disease, congenital disorders, and infertility. We're not interested in attempting to create babies with high IQs or great ability. We do wish and we do have a responsibility to our patients to help our patients in the best way possible. One out of ten Canadian couples trying to have children is found to be infertile.

Moreover, genetic diseases are a significant cause of concern to many Canadians. Parents may have a high risk of transmitting severe life-threatening disorders, such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs disease, and many other similar conditions. I have to emphasize that the spectrum of severity is quite variable, but they have lifelong implications for families. Fetuses are stillborn, babies fail to thrive and die in infancy, healthy babies stop progressing and regress to die in infancy, children attempt to grow and live with severe disabilities that become life-threatening, and adults cannot have healthy children.

We work as a group: family physicians, supportive counsellors, obstetricians, geneticists, neo-natologists, fertility specialists. We all work together to try to help our patients.

I'll give you some specific examples where this bill would cause problems. In seeking to avoid the transmission of a life-threatening disorder, gene therapy presents a great promise of effective prevention of disease. One of our current problems with gene therapy is getting the gene into fully differentiated, specialized cells of target tissues, a particular organ, for example. This could be avoided if the disease gene were corrected in the zygote or early embryo stage, when the cells are more multi-potential and they turn out to be more amenable to genetic manipulation.

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However, if you look at proposed paragraph 286.1(1)(b), it could be interpreted to rule out the possibility of this gene therapy at the easiest stages—zygotes or gametes. Specifically, how could you interpret “alter the genetic structure”? Are we talking about all of the DNA? Part of the DNA? One gene, or even part of a gene? A single base pair is all you need to correct in cystic fibrosis—one molecule out of six billion. There are about 100,000 genes in every cell. The DNA itself is wrapped in many different types of protein and it's associated with different cellular structures. What and how much and when can you attempt therapy short of coming into conflict with interpretation of this wording?

Here is an another example. Mitochondria are structures in the cytoplasm of cells. They're not in the nucleus, they're in the cell body, but they have their own DNA. It's different from the nuclear DNA. Mutations of mitochrondrial DNA cause severe disorders that are of maturity onset. Often they show up five, ten, twenty, thirty years into life. Only the mitochondria of the egg cytoplasm are contributed to the fetus. So we could prevent the transmission of mitochondrial disease by inserting the nucleus of an egg from a mother at high risk into the cytoplasm of a normal donor egg. This has been done in the world, in studies in mammals, and it is effective. It could prevent the transmission of serious disease. The DNA of the nucleus has not been altered, but the DNA of the mitochondria have been exchanged by transplantation. Does this come into conflict with this bill?

For a third example, let's look at in vitro fertilization, which is a current, commonly used, accepted medical procedure. Sometimes during this procedure an embryo becomes twinned after it's implanted in the uterus. This is not a planned outcome; it just happens. But if both of the twinned embryos were carried to term in a successful pregnancy, again, would this come into conflict with paragraph 286.1(1)(a)?

These questions can only be resolved by a careful moral, ethical, medical, scientific, and legal review on a case-by-case basis. It is critical to have responsible government regulation and prohibition, and oversight by a knowledgeable regulatory board that can act reasonably and react to new developments in the field.

This bill does not provide any such framework for interpretation, enforcement, or response to advances. It presents a great danger that it could be used inappropriately to threaten legitimate medical care, and I speak for our patients. Further, it could be used to prevent ethically approved research into new techniques that could be of benefit. And it could be very difficult to enforce for those applications that you would like to prevent, that we would all like to prevent.

I emphasize that it's very difficult to foresee future advances. In spite of our desire to act promptly to prohibit human cloning, we must ensure that we are able to embrace the future as we wish as a society. We are all agreed that human cloning is not acceptable and must be prevented. We are all agreed that the Canadian public must be reassured that this will not be allowed to happen in our country. However, unfortunately, regretfully, this legislation is not the appropriate instrument to achieve this aim. We ask that it not be passed into law.

We are in complete support of the spoken aim of the Minister of Health—and I quote the Globe and Mail and National Post—of introducing a comprehensive body of prohibitionary and regulatory legislation this fall. We are also impatient with this process. It has been many years. But we welcome this development and we would be pleased to try to participate in any helpful way.

Thank you for listening to me.

The Chairman: Thank you, Dr. Carter.

Now we are joined by Dr. Margaret Somerville, who, as I indicated earlier, didn't have enough influence to alter flight schedules and had to follow the ones they gave her.

We are pleased you made it nonetheless. You've been before this committee on other occasions, so you know the drill. You're next.

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Dr. Margaret Somerville (Gale Professor of Law, McGill University Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law): Thank you.

I've been working on the topic of human cloning, and it's very interesting to walk in at this point and hear two presentations that so very well summarize the two strands of argument you can have in this area. I have a somewhat different lens with which I come into it. It's not simply the scientific one, which Dr. Carter has put so well, and the medical urgency one and the good that we can do out of it, or the one that was put about the concerns we should have about these—what it means in terms of disabled people, broader values.

I think what we're facing here, and perhaps cloning is the question that most presents us as a society with this issue, is whether in a post-modern, democratic, western, secular society such as we are in Canada on the verge of the 21st century, we can still say that as a society we think something is inherently wrong and therefore we're going to say we won't do it, no matter how much good could come out of it.

This is the point. There's no question that the scientists can show us.... Really, it amounts to the question of experimentation on human embryos—that's the first area you have to look at. If we allow that, there's certainly huge scientific knowledge, medical benefits we can reap from that. I believe what we have to do is say first of all that no matter what the benefits, how extraordinary they would be, should we not do this because this is inherently wrong to do in itself? In a way—and it's fairly stark language, but it's the language I've come to think about this in—could we ever say that it's okay to make human embryos our scientific manufacturing plant? That's basically what we have to be able to say.

What we have to be able to say is that despite the fact that those are human entities, which is the word I use to try to get away from all the other connotations, we can use those as the basis of our doing science and eventually doing commerce—there's nothing wrong with that, since commerce is not inherently wrong in itself—and doing a huge amount of good for other people who have terrible diseases, whether they're genetic diseases or late-onset diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis. The list of diseases that could be affected by this research is enormous.

What I would argue is that we can come to a conclusion that some things are inherently wrong on a secular basis. We can no longer turn to God because we don't all adhere to religion or to belief in God, and we don't use that as the basis of what we decide for our society as a whole. What I think we can say, and I think this is consistent with values that are very deep in the Canadian society, is that we must always act to ensure the most profound respect for human life. I would add to that to also ensure the most profound respect for what I call in a secular sense the human spirit, the sense of what it means to be human—nothing to do with having a belief in the supernatural. Then I think we have to ask, taking those two principles, does human cloning contravene those principles? I think it does, and therefore that's the reason I would think we shouldn't allow it.

To pick up, though, on something Dr. Carter said, it's very easy to argue those two principles for what is called human reproductive cloning. That means you've got the intention of creating this embryo, identical in nuclear DNA to another living human, or dead human, as the case may be, and you want to let that go on to be born. Certainly that is what you seem to be prohibiting in proposed paragraph 286.1(1)(a).

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However, the other sorts of human cloning that are on the table are what are called basic research human cloning. That is, you've got no intention of allowing this embryo to be brought into being as a born baby—that's one kind. The other kind is called therapeutic cloning, where what you do is some manipulation with the human embryo. The most extreme example that's talked about in this context is making headless humans so the body can be used as a source of organs for transplantation later on, if the person needs it. So whether what you have here in this section would prohibit all of those different future intentional uses of the cloning I think is not clear. I think it is clear that you've said no reproductive cloning, but I don't know whether you intend to ban these others or not.

The other thing I would pick up on from the bill—and here, interestingly, although I disagree with Dr. Carter on the first section, I agree with him on the second, with very concerned reservations—is the notion of therapeutic alteration of the human germ cell line. Because really what proposed paragraph (b) prohibits is alteration of the germ cell line. Some countries have decided we should never do that, because it's just too dangerous in itself and it opens up too much danger of abuse of how the germ cell line would be altered once we allowed it.

What that means, as I'm sure you're aware, is that every descendant of that embryo that you alter will be altered in the same way. Of course one of the areas people are most concerned about is, for example, enhancement of human intelligence to create what are called the gene-rich and the gene-poor. The gene-rich are the people with the very markedly enhanced intelligence. There are all sorts of theories that they will only want to reproduce with each other and not with the gene pool, so that we'll get increasing difference in groups of humans in respect to intelligence. Those are the sorts of concerns.

However, if, as in the example just given to you, we could in an embryo correct the cystic fibrosis abnormality in the genes, I think we can safeguard the use of those techniques enough to ensure that they would only be used for strictly legitimate, societally approved, therapeutic uses. That's the concern there.

Now, what do I think is going to happen? What do I think we're facing? I think we're facing, for a combination of reasons, very powerful forces that will make it difficult to prohibit not so much human reproductive cloning—I think a lot of people are horrified by that—but make it difficult, along the lines of what Dr. Carter said, to put in a ban that will be sufficiently broad.

The reasons for that are.... If you look at the major forces in our society that are shaping these debates, they are based on what is called a situational ethics approach. That says nothing is inherently wrong; it all depends on the circumstances. The circumstances are why are you doing it; who's doing it; do they have good intentions; have we got safeguards? Accompanying that we have intense individualism—and you're seeing this emerging in the cloning debate and you're seeing it emerging in the embryo research debate—well, these are individuals' decisions and they should have a right to decide for themselves.

Linked to that, or a special version of that, are what you can call extreme reproductive rights. For instance, John Robertson, from the University of Texas, believes now that cloning is simply another form of human reproduction, that there shouldn't be any inhibitions on how you reproduce, and therefore it's a private matter and the government shouldn't be passing legislation to prohibit you doing that.

We're also a society that's put an immense focus on individual consent as the validating criterion. So a lot of people would say let people decide for themselves, providing they're sufficiently informed about what's happening.

For instance, that's currently what's happening in the United States with regard to the recent hearings about allowing embryo research and what's called primordial stem cell research, where they take a pluripotent, immortal.... They can create an immortal cell line from a cell from a blastocyst, and in doing so destroy the human embryo from which they take that cell.

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One of the questions there, one I can't answer but I need answered, is whether that pluripotent cell from the blastocyst is in itself another embryo when you have that taken out, and is that indeed a form of cloning? It would appear to me that it is, if it's a pluripotent cell. Anyway, I'm not sure about the science on that.

The other thing is—and this is where we come in very strongly with the sciences—the powerful argument of the freedom of scientific inquiry. In fact, Canada is participating in the world science conference in Budapest in two weeks' time, and that's looking at drafting a universal declaration on ethical responsibilities in science. Part of the concern there is whether it is justified to inhibit science. Of course, people use the argument, well, look at what we would have inhibited if we had done this in the past. Then probably the most powerful argument, particularly because of the way in which it can be presented in our society, which is largely informed as a public through visual images on television, is when you show the good that you could do coming out of this research, would you be justified in banning it? So it's an extremely difficult debate.

I personally would urge, and certainly I think most Canadians agree, that there should be a ban on human reproductive cloning. Hans Jonas has put it as powerfully as I think we can put it: that every person has a right to have their life as a surprise to themselves. I think we all have the right to have our own individual ticket in the great human genetic lottery.

I also believe the human genome is the common property of humankind, that we don't own it, that we hold it on trust for future generations. One of the things I think we haven't been consciously aware enough about is that it was necessarily held on trust for us because nobody had the science and the technology to interfere with it. We're the first generation that could ever decide not to hold that on trust.

So at the very least, I don't think we should be saying we have to do these things next month or there's a problem. We have to have long, reflective debate, and in the meantime, we shouldn't be using these techniques in ways that could be immensely harmful to the most profound human values and to the most profound sense of what it means to be human and what is the meaning in human life.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Dr. Somerville.

Notwithstanding the difficulties of the argument, the mover of this motion obviously went through all that thought process. So maybe we should let Madame Picard speak first, but because we're strapped by procedure here, we're going to give the word to Mr. Vellacott.

Mr. Maurice Vellacott (Wanuskewin, Ref.): I appreciate our witnesses appearing today. I'm sure this will be very helpful to all of us.

My understanding of Bill C-247, in terms of paragraphs 286.1(1)(a) and 286.1(1)(b), is that it prohibits cloning; it prohibits genetic alteration of the therapeutic or germ-line variety, and non-therapeutic germ line as well. In some of the remarks that were made here, and particularly by Dr. Carter, I got an impression that you thought it was prohibiting more than that. Or you thought it was fuzzy enough; it wasn't clear on that. I thought it was just prohibiting germ line in the therapeutic and non-therapeutic class of cloning. Am I to understand that you're saying it's prohibiting research in respect to the non-germ line as well?

Dr. Ronald Carter: I think it's possible that it could be, if you wish to interpret it that way.

The point I was trying to make is that on the one hand it would be very difficult to enforce this because of the panoply of techniques that are out there, and you can pick and choose some techniques to do some things and others to do other things. On the other hand, if you were to try to go ahead and do something that was ethically accepted, went through a review, was funded by, for example, the Medical Research Council, somebody could look at this bill and say no, you're not permitted to do that. It's a difficulty in interpretation.

When it says, for example, “contains the same genetic information”, how much, how little, all the same as somebody else, part the same as somebody else? That's one of the examples I was trying to give. How would you enforce this?

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How would the department—and I would like information from the department at some point on this—see this bill enforced, first, to stop something that we might agree that we all want stopped, and second, to permit something that we might agree as a society that we would like to see go forward?

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: Okay, this is getting into highly technical stuff, but does this not prevent or prohibit manipulating cells in the body, the reproductive cells?

Dr. Ronald Carter: I don't think it does.

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: But when you're talking in terms of transmission to the next generation—“is capable of transmission to a subsequent generation”—we're not talking somatic cells; we're talking—

Dr. Ronald Carter: That could be, but for example there are enzyme systems now where you can invoke an enzyme that excises part of a gene after you have inserted it. You can turn it on and off like a switch. It's used very commonly in mouse cell lines and generations of mice. You could put it in for one person and take it out. That's technically possible to do now. This is what I'm saying. There are some aspects of these techniques that are necessary for cloning as we see it now, but they're also useful for bona fide procedures.

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: Okay. I want to ask Dr. Scorsone to comment, and I have a question for her.

The Chairman: Do you want to comment on that?

Dr. Suzanne Rozell Scorsone: I think it's important at the same time not to assume that science is any more capable of precision than in fact it is. Very often claims are made that are almost magical. If you're going to put a gene into an embryo that in theory would be passed on in the germ line, you're not able to put that gene into the DNA double helix; you're just putting a little bit of a segment of DNA into the nucleus, or if it's mitochondrial, into the cytoplasm, and it's sort of floating around.

So there are questions that arise, such as, in miosis, in the creation of the sperm and the ovum for the next generation, the way cells replicate is that they double, and then a spindle, a little sort of fibrous thing, attaches to a centromere, a place in the middle of the replicated chromosomes, and one of each migrates to the opposite. They migrate to opposite poles, and then the cells separate. That's even for somatic replication. But then, for the germ cells, this is further divided in miosis so that you get half the number each time. Such segments would not have a centromere, so what possible way would there be for the replicated material, if it replicated at all, to go into the opposite cells? You could end up with trisomy in one, which could cause a major disorder. Down's syndrome is a trisomy. There are many disorders that are caused by having too much of the genetic material for something, and the other germ cell might have none at all of this.

So there are simply inherent problems before you even get to the trial and error of experimentation. There are things that simply could not possibly be there, such as centromeres, in the genetic material that's inserted into a cell. So when you're talking about doing something in the germ line, you're talking about things for which science A right now has no means of approach, and science B may never. So any time you do it, you are necessarily subjecting the next generation to serious risk of major disorders, either lacking the genetic material or having too much of it.

All kinds of experimentation can be done in animal models. You have mice, sheep, whatever it is you want; take them. There is no reason to subject human beings to this risk. Therefore, I think having legislation such as this, which would prohibit it, is fully justified.

The Chairman: Mr. Vellacott, I'll give you a chance to get back to your supplementary, but I want to give our witnesses an opportunity to respond to each other, not necessarily to engage in debate, but I think you'll agree with me that maybe it's useful for committee members to have this line of thought to pursue. So let me go to Dr. Somerville and then Dr. Carter.

Dr. Margaret Somerville: Listening to your question, I have the impression that you're thinking of transfer of a somatic cell nucleus into an enucleated ovum as the method of cloning, like the Dolly technique.

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: I'm talking about the transmission by the reproductive cells to the subsequent generations.

• 1000

Dr. Margaret Somerville: That's part B. That's whether or not you can interfere with the germ line. But with part A, one of the things is that it's not simply the Dolly technique that you would be concerned with here. For instance, if you get an eight-cell embryo and you separate each of those eight cells, providing you put around them sort of jelly-like substance called a zona pellucida, there's a chance that each of those eight cells could form an identical human, so that is human embryo cloning.

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: It's splitting.

Dr. Margaret Somerville: It's splitting, but it's also cloning, because you have genetically identical clones—and they're absolutely identical. They're not the enucleated organ ones. So when you do it.... For instance, this is a symposium on what's called “human primordial stem cells”. At a very, very early stage of that original process, where you form what's called the blastocyst...they've now just very recently been able to pull out these internal cells that go on to form the fetus, and then, of course, the child and the person.

So one of the things you have to ask is whether proposed section 286.1 would prohibit doing that. Would that be a form of cloning that would be prohibited by proposed section 286.1? I personally think it would be, but I don't know what....

Dr. Ronald Carter: I think this discussion exhibits the exact difficulties I was trying to explain. This is not a simple situation in terms of the techniques that are now and will become available.

With all due respect, it's quite easy to do what's called site-directed mutagenesis, to put a gene into the genome in the nucleus at a very specific place and turn it on and off with enzymes. That's done very commonly every day in mice and larger animals. It's used to select cell lines.

So with respect to the second part, you could turn off a risk for subsequent generations if you wished. You could remove it.

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: Is that 100% accurate?

Dr. Ronald Carter: In terms of mouse cell lines, yes. I'm assuming that the technique could be extended in time. I'm not talking about what might actually be done or what somebody might actually want to do right now. I'm saying it's possible.

I think we're all agreed that we don't want to see cloning. The trouble is in terms of the interpretation of what you can and can't use.

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: I want Fiona to respond too, but I was also going to ask all of you whether you think, right now, in your view and your interpretation of things, we are doing.... My understanding is we're not doing germ line—

Dr. Ronald Carter: No, we're not.

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: —therapeutic. It's science fiction kind of stuff.

Dr. Ronald Carter: It's not science fiction, but we are currently not doing it, to my knowledge. I'm saying the techniques—

The Chairman: A caveat.

Dr. Ronald Carter: —could be extended to it with effort. It is more than theoretically possible. But to my knowledge, nobody in Canada is doing that kind of work.

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: Even in terms of good therapeutic stuff, it's all done—

Dr. Ronald Carter: Nobody, to my knowledge.

Ms. Fiona Miller: I do think there is a danger of getting so technical about this that we quibble too much. I do think it's important.... I did not realize that this was the CCMG's position, that you are in support of germ-line genetic engineering.

I do think it's important that we not tie ourselves in knots trying to pretend that there's a big distinction between so-called therapeutic germ line and so-called non-therapeutic germ line. The fact of the matter is, however simplistic a portrait one paints about switching on this gene, inserting that gene, however theoretically possible.... Clearly there are mammalian models where this is being done with greater and increasingly more success. Obviously there are technical problems, but I agree it's not science fiction.

What you are saying, however, is in support of germ line, and in terms of discussing this as an issue of principle, this is a very profoundly problematic thing for our very honourable medical and scientific organizations to be condoning.

It does suggest to me that there is a degree of scientific hubris that I had not actually thought we had achieved.

May I put on record that there is no such thing as a good or a bad gene, and I think Dr. Carter would agree with me about that. There are genes that in certain contexts can manifest themselves as diseases, but at the particular place in human evolutionary history that we are in, where these diseases pose problems is not the only context within which we should be making decisions about the management of what Dr. Somerville rightly calls the common human property of the human genome. I think it's extraordinarily important that be stated.

• 1005

The Chairman: Well, we always enjoy a great debate, and because the committee said I should have some latitude, I'm going to allow this to go on. I find it—apart from it being interesting—very useful for the consideration of this bill.

So with the indulgence of Madame Picard, to whom I will go in a minute, I'm going to ask for a comment by Dr. Carter and Dr. Somerville first.

Is that okay, Madame?

Dr. Ronald Carter: Thank you.

I don't want to be misunderstood. I'm not, and speaking for my organization, my organization is not in favour of human cloning. We're not in favour of doing things the Canadian public finds ethically unacceptable. What we are asking for is legislation that permits us as a society to embrace those benefits that we as a society see as acceptable, in ways that we see acceptable.

What I'm trying to illustrate is that some of this is technically possible now. It is a relatively urgent situation. To my knowledge, it's not happening now in Canada. It's not being used in a human context. But it is possible. It's not science fiction. And we need to have a reasonable, rational, very careful approach on a case-by-case basis. This is a confusing area, and we have to know exactly what we're dealing with. I'm not condoning anything outright. I'm not asking for approval of anything outright. I'm simply saying that this legislation is not comprehensive enough and it's too open to interpretation to be enforceable.

The Chairman: Dr. Somerville.

Dr. Margaret Somerville: Well, I query what Dr. Carter means when he says he doesn't approve human cloning.

I imagine what you mean there is that you don't approve of human reproductive cloning. That is where you've created a child with the same genome, except for the mitochondrial DNA. But when I listened to your presentation, it seemed to me as though you wanted to do embryo research that would, in effect, amount to human cloning, because you would have identical human embryos.

Dr. Ronald Carter: What I'm saying is that if through bona fide, approved, ethically reviewed research protocols the Canadian society accepts that, then we would ask that it be permitted.

Dr. Margaret Somerville: But then you can't say that you don't approve of human cloning.

Dr. Ronald Carter: I think for certain uses, it is possible to generate an argument for non-reproductive human cloning, for parts of a genome, for specific applications. It might be acceptable to the Canadian public to see this technique used.

Dr. Margaret Somerville: Yes, I know. That's good, Dr. Carter, and I understand now. But then we have to be very careful not to say that your society doesn't approve human cloning, because now you're telling us that there's one kind of human cloning done with one purpose that you wouldn't approve, but you would approve the other.

Dr. Ronald Carter: One that might be acceptable in the future.

Dr. Margaret Somerville: Yes. Exactly.

The Chairman: The last comment on this particular question goes to Dr. Scorsone.

Dr. Suzanne Rozell Scorsone: There's an interesting distinction coming out of what Dr. Carter has said. Who exactly is it that determines what Canadian society believes to be acceptable? I was under the impression that Parliament was the voice of the people, not necessarily funding bodies. I'm all for ethics committees. You know, they're wonderful things. But if we're looking at what Canadian society deems acceptable, I would suspect that this house is in a rather outstanding and socially recognized position to do that.

Dr. Ronald Carter: These funding bodies operate within the laws of Canada, as we all do.

Dr. Suzanne Rozell Scorsone: Exactly. So whether or not there should be a law with respect to this, I would urge the committee to consider, is a function of this house, because it is this house that determines the laws. Then the ethics committees will function within that.

So I don't think it's at all inappropriate for this house to consider this legislation.

The Chairman: We're back to Madame Picard and her bill. Thank you.

Madame Picard.

[Translation]

Mrs. Pauline Picard (Drummond, BQ): I would like to tell our witnesses that I'm very pleased and touched to see them here today. Your comments are very important to us. I was really impressed by everything you have said so far. We are legislators, not scientists, and we are trying to represent our fellow citizens well by passing laws that will improve their quality of life.

• 1010

My purpose, in tabling this bill, was to preserve human dignity in the implementation of all these techniques. As I have often said, science moves much more quickly than legislators can. That is a very important point.

Bill C-47 did not go anywhere. We were well aware that it had some weaknesses. As Dr. Carter said, it is not easy to establish guidelines or a code that will allow us to legislate properly in this field. I don't think things are moving quickly enough. We had a voluntary moratorium since 1995. We don't know where that is at. Did the Advisory Committee really do its job? Have innovations in these technologies been found?

I thought the most urgent thing—and I know something else will have to be added to this bill—was to establish some guidelines so that human cloning for all sorts of purposes would not be allowed in Canada. Scientists may find that this bill is not perfect, but I wanted to take a first step. It will be up to Health Canada to add something else to it. I think we really must act. I've read a great deal on this subject. Even though people say it's not science fiction, sometimes it seems that it is.

We hear that at the moment cells that will produce beating hearts are being explored. I read that that was being done in the United States. As Dr. Carter says, this is not being done in Canada at the moment, but that does not necessarily mean that it never will be done here. I don't think it will be long coming. So we need to take steps to preserve human life for future generations, as Dr. Somerville was saying. I think we have to act quickly.

Do you think the Criminal Code is one way of regulating cloning? Is it the most effective way of doing so, or do you think we could do something else?

[English]

The Chairman: That was a short question, madam. Anyway, I listened.

Which of you would like to start to answer that one first? Dr. Scorsone.

Dr. Suzanne Rozell Scorsone: This is an area on which I would defer to the experience of the House and those who are experts in the enforcement of law. Of course the question of enforcement has been raised, but questions of enforcement can be raised with legislation that prohibits anything. It is even difficult to enforce laws on theft and homicide because people keep doing those things.

Nonetheless, we have laws and seek, as a society, to find modalities of enforcement, so there is a bottom line and some level of control. I'm sure the Government of Canada has considerable experience in dealing with criminal sanctions surrounding the Food and Drugs Act, for example, and other related legislation, so criminal sanctions can be brought to bear, but not necessarily under the Criminal Code.

• 1015

I don't know what the best thing would be, as long as it has teeth. There is one thing, however, I would like to raise that I forgot to raise at the beginning. As proposed subsection 286.1(6) in Bill C-247 now reads—as it did in Bill C-47, I should add—it says that a prosecution for this offence may not be instituted unless it is consented to by or on behalf of the Attorney General of Canada.

I would prefer to see that subsection deleted if this legislation goes through because it would appear to put a drag on enforcement. It seems to me it should be enforced. If this House decides to put it through under the Criminal Code, this would be the most effective way. This is so offensive, damaging and incompatible with Canadian values that it rates being put under the Criminal Code.

Then I would like to see this provision removed because it could potentially politicize enforcement, in the sense that it would then be a question of “This is happening, but will we prosecute or will we not?” If this House decides that doing these things is indeed unacceptable, it should be enforceable like any other piece of legislation that is passed by the House of Commons and promulgated as a law of Canada.

I leave how it should be done to you, but I would like to see it enforceable in the most effective and normal way that would be standard among the laws of Canada.

The Chairman: Thank you.

I don't want to interject with my own level of ignorance, but we will try to verify whether proposed subsection 286.1(6) is the standard section we would put in legislation regarding criminal law, so there is a legislative authority for all action that—

A voice: Is this the case?

Dr. Margaret Somerville: No. With respect, I don't think so. I can just speak from one person's experience when we were drafting certain things at the Law Reform Commission of Canada. You usually put that provision in where you thought the legislation might be used by certain groups with a particular interest, in ways you didn't want the legislation to be used. So it was a safeguard against having the legislation used in ways you would maybe not want it to be used.

The Chairman: That would address the issue Dr. Scorsone has raised that it might be used by particular groups unfairly or perhaps—

Dr. Margaret Somerville: No. I may be right or wrong, but my reading on it was that this would prevent, for instance, pro-life groups from using this legislation to challenge human embryo experimentation, which would be exactly what you would do if this legislation were passed.

In fact that's exactly what's happening in the United States right now. There's been a recommendation, for instance, by the president's commission on bioethics that human embryo experimentation be allowed to go ahead, which it hasn't been allowed to do until now. So you will get challenges to that because of our very differing views on what the moral status of the human embryo is and whether it ought to be protected by criminal law. That's one of the fundamental debates that's going on.

The Chairman: I guess we'll have an opportunity, when we bring department officials and justice officials before this committee, to see what the intention was in proposed subsection 286.1(6). We could ask the mover of the section herself whether that was the intention.

[Translation]

Mrs. Pauline Picard: Yes, please.

The Chairman: What was the intention?

Mrs. Pauline Picard: To ask the attorney—

The Chairman: I'm not talking just about asking this of Health and Justice officials. I would also like to ask you whether your intention was to prevent very specific abuse by certain groups in society.

Mrs. Pauline Picard: I don't understand your question.

The Chairman: Then I will speak Spanish.

Mrs. Pauline Picard: I'm sorry.

[English]

The Chairman: Was it your intention, when you drafted that section, to have a section that would enable the agents of law to act as a safeguard, in the event that special groups seized this legislation to further a particular agenda?

• 1020

[Translation]

Mrs. Pauline Picard: Yes.

[English]

The Chairman: Can we verify it as well when the justice committee—

[Translation]

Mrs. Pauline Picard: That was recommended to me by people who have studied the Criminal Code. I was asked to include this provision in the bill to strengthen it.

[English]

The Chairman: It looks like you are a lot closer to the truth than the chair was. This is not a unique situation. I guess we probably have raised a few questions here. I see Dr. Carter—

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: Can I just ask—

The Chairman: No. That's okay.

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: I'm not understanding what they're saying here.

The Chairman: Maybe it will come out here. We'll hear Dr. Carter, Dr. Scorsone, Ms. Miller and then Dr. Somerville.

Dr. Margaret Somerville: I think I'd like to reply to Madame Picard's question.

The Chairman: I thought you had already.

Dr. Margaret Somerville: No, I replied to your question. Is that okay?

The Chairman: I didn't want to detour the dialogue. I succeeded again.

Dr. Margaret Somerville: May I briefly reply to that?

The Chairman: Okay, and then I will go through, one, two, and three.

Dr. Margaret Somerville: As to whether this should be in the criminal law, we put the protection of our most fundamental values into the criminal law. But originally, criminal law was meant to protect society. Its role in protecting individuals as individuals is a relatively modern one. The reason it protected individuals in its earliest forms was for the benefit of society. So it's very interesting in this context, because I think we're coming back to that role of criminal law.

I would argue it's most important for us not to have human cloning for the protection of society, as much as for the protection of any individual that is in some way harmed by that. It was the original purpose of the criminal law, therefore I would suggest to you it is very suitable that it be placed there.

The second thing is that the criminal law forms and reflects our most important human values. One of those, of course, is this profound respect for human life. Whether or not it can be fully enforced is a secondary question. We know our law against murder is not, sadly, 100% effective, but we would never think of not having that law just because it's not 100% effective. It's more important to have it than to not have it. It's a bit like democracy. The criminal law is not perfect, but it's a lot better in some cases than not having it at all.

If it were totally ignored, that would bring the criminal law into disrepute. You can't afford that, because it would weaken the whole criminal law structure, which you need respect for.

Something we don't think about very much is that if the vast majority of Canadians didn't live so they wouldn't offend the Criminal Code, the Criminal Code would be totally ineffective. It's only in those few cases we get that we seem to see it operating. Let's assume it's effective in causing the prevention. Look at how much harm the criminal law prevents, which we don't see. We just see the cases where it doesn't work. So I don't think enforcement is such a concern.

The Chairman: Dr. Somerville, I said I was going to go one, two and three, but I'm going to exercise my prerogative as chair to ask one more question. Maybe you'll keep it in the back of your mind while they answer.

In your response to Madam Picard, you indicated that the collective decision about reinforcing the respect for life was crucial to an understanding of the values of society and the bases upon which criminal law is founded. Does that not mean then that proposed subsection 286.1(6) leaves that ultimate definition of what is the quality and quantity of that value—if I might use those two qualifiers—in the hands of the Attorney General?

Dr. Scorsone.

• 1025

Dr. Suzanne Rozell Scorsone: I fully understand the concern of not wanting to have a section of the Criminal Code manipulable by any particular group in a plural society. Nonetheless, I wonder about this, because if the legislation is clear that cloning is not acceptable, whether it be for the use of the tissues or reproductive cloning, then it doesn't much matter who brings the subject up, it's still unacceptable under the law. Also, I was under the impression that criminal law is not a subject of tort. It's a question of charges. Those are not brought by any special interest group. They're brought by the normal enforcement authorities who, presumably, would be bound to not be manipulated by any particular group.

My concern was the other way round. The difficulty, as we all know, is that the area of reproductive technologies is filled with well-intentioned people from many different sectors who are all in their own way interest groups, whatever one may wish to call them. There are, for instance, pharmaceutical companies, agribusiness, physicians who engage in various sorts of things, and the researchers themselves. There are any number of possible interest groups, some of them more powerful than others, with regard to the institutions of society.

My concern with this particular provision would be that if there were in fact evidence of something that had been deemed by Parliament to be unacceptable, it could potentially be lobbied against and politicized if the Attorney General had to rule on whether or not a prosecution would proceed because various powerful interests in society might in fact weigh against it and say, we'll stop it, leave it alone. Then it could wind up going on anyway. So my concern is potential politicization not by pro-life groups, who would not have the power to do this anyway given that it's a criminal sanction, but rather by powerful interests in society who would wish to see this proceed potentially bringing pressure to bear on government.

If society decides that this is simply unacceptable, then it seems to me that there are enough safeguards built into the normal enforcement criminal justice process to ensure that something undue would not occur. Simply leave it to the normal investigative and judicial operations of the criminal justice system.

The Chairman: Ms. Miller.

Ms. Fiona Miller: I wanted to identify the fact we all know but that we need to be reminded of, which is that the Criminal Code is the chief instrument in the federal government's possession and that there is, in fact, a very long tradition of using the Criminal Code to underlie health law at the federal level. The Health Protection Branch is premised on the Food and Drugs Act, which is a Criminal Code provision, I understand.

I'm not a lawyer, and I'm working with some feminist lawyers to clarify this, but my understanding is that we shouldn't just see the use of the criminal law as this process of criminalizing and labelling. It is a very powerful instrument. It's one of the chief instruments available to the federal government, and we cannot shy away from its use if we want national standards. So I certainly think it's a very viable instrument to be using in cases of prohibition.

I have a comment with regard to this issue of proposed subsection (6). I don't want to complexify this much more, but I would just point out that, as those present know, the Health Protection Branch is currently under criminal review by the RCMP for various scandals, such as tainted blood, the destruction of documents, and the Meme breast implant situation. My point is that if we allow the Attorney General to be the final arbiter of the prosecution of cases, this becomes a very serious problem when it is within the province of the health department to regulate these things. We've already seen that the Health Protection Branch is, as Krever has said, criminally liable for some of its conduct. So it's very important that any kind of criminal investigation be allowed to proceed without ultimate political decision-making.

• 1030

My final point would be in relation to this issue of a health inspectorate. Clearly, for something like this a health inspectorate is required. The only thing that has actually been meaningfully regulated within the RGTs is sperm banks, and that not adequately. So the regulations that were passed many years ago, as a result of the findings of the royal commission, to actually try to ensure safe sperm are to be regulated and inspected through the Health Protection Branch. Any kinds of regulations are ultimately going to have to be allocated to a particular branch of government. The Health Protection Branch is a very logical place to locate these kinds of duties, or an alternate body will have to be set up. The Minister of Health will be working on setting up and allocating that body. So I think there is a lag time here in terms of identifying the health inspectorate that would investigate these kinds of provisions. I'm comfortable, however, with that lag time because it's a very complicated issue. It will be raised, I'm confident of that.

The Chairman: Ms. Miller, just very briefly, for purposes of clarification only and not to editorialize, you used the word “criminalize”. You said that there's the criminalization by virtue of investigation of the Health Protection Branch. There might be a negative impression there. I think what you really meant is that the Health Protection Branch itself is also subject to criminal law and is not above criminal law. The fact that there are ongoing investigations is a normal process, and therefore it ought to apply to the regulator as much as to those who are regulated. That's what I took from that. Is that okay?

Ms. Fiona Miller: No. The regulator is under investigation.

The Chairman: That's what I said. The regulator is as much subject to legislation as are those that are regulated.

Ms. Fiona Miller: Right.

The Chairman: Should I understand, then, from your answer to Madam Picard that placing this under the criminal law is fine but that you would perhaps eliminate subsection (6)? Is that what I should take from—

Ms. Fiona Miller: Yes, and that the issue of a health inspectorate is pending.

The Chairman: Okay. Thank you.

Dr. Carter.

Dr. Ronald Carter: I have very little to say about this, except that in your original question I think you were asking whether or not the Criminal Code is the proper place to try to restrict this activity. At a hearing two years ago for Bill C-47, we were comparing that bill to the British approach, and the question raised by a number of groups was why the Criminal Code was used in Canada when a regulatory approach was used in the U.K. The answer from the government's lawyers at that meeting was that the Criminal Code was the only mechanism they had to effectively enforce this. We asked if there could be a regulatory component, and we were told that it wasn't necessary. In the proposed legislation I believe there's going to be a Criminal Code component and a regulatory component. So I think the government's position on this may have evolved from what we heard two years ago.

We're not experts on this. What we would like to see is an appropriate regulatory framework so that it can be properly interpreted. That's all we're asking for.

The Chairman: Dr. Somerville.

Dr. Margaret Somerville: I'd like to make just a slight correction. There is an unusual situation in Canada where private criminal prosecutions are possible under the Canadian Criminal Code, and that was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada. I can't recall the name of the case, but it's a case out of Quebec where the public authorities refused to lay a sort of minor assault charge against a young person who had interfered with an old lady. She went ahead and laid her own criminal prosecution, and it went right to the Supreme Court. Under our Criminal Code it is possible for private bodies or people to lay a private criminal charge, and this is quite unusual. That's why that provision is in there for the Attorney General, not that I agree with it, because I think the point is even stronger that you would then subject whether or not there could be a prosecution to the political process. Particularly in these areas, these things are political dynamite because they separate the electorate and people agree or disagree.

The second point I'd like to make is this, and I think it comes right back to what I was trying to argue in my presentation. What Dr. Carter says is let's have a regulatory approach. What you have to recognize is that in itself says that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with doing this, it's just a matter of doing it according to what we think are the proper parameters.

• 1035

If what you think is that there is something inherently wrong in human cloning, then what you do is you put it in the Criminal Code and you ban it, because that's what we do with everything that we think is inherently wrong, like murdering somebody or whatever else it might be. So the regulatory approach only necessarily recognizes a situational ethics approach to this.

The Chairman: Thank you, Dr. Somerville.

Mr. Jackson has been waiting patiently and I'm going to go to Mr. Jackson.

Mr. Ovid L. Jackson (Bruce—Grey, Lib.): Mr. Chair, I have a dilemma. There are many thoughts going through my mind, but this thought was prompted during the last flurry of discussions.

It seems to me that in society in modern times, because information comes through so quickly we always want to have—as I believe one of our guests said—these magic bullets. On the one hand they say that Parliament represents the people and speaks for the people, and when there's a consensus we will pass laws that enforce people's thoughts. But on the other hand, it seems to me that they don't want Parliament to be involved in discussions. I find it very difficult as a legislator that if I were a minister somehow I wouldn't have control over my department. After you said to me I'm an elected official and then you say to remove the minister from the equation, I find that difficult.

I'll tell you why I find that difficult. I used to be a mayor, and you're culpable for a lot of things. If I went out and got a dump site that everybody needed, you got a big hassle over it. It's the old NIMBY syndrome—nobody wants it. But then you get it and then you have to take all the precautions to make sure it works within all the parameters of the environment and see that the leakage is not going into the streams, all this stuff. And in the end I could be prosecuted because I was the head of the corporation. And now the minister who is the head of this corporation that is culpable, you want to lock him up or whatever.

If there is a problem, nobody escapes. In our society, somebody's got to be.... If the minister knows at that time he or she had all the information, they have to do it. So I think you can't remove the minister from the legislation. That's my personal view. So that's the one part and it's a good discussion.

I'm finding that I don't think we have enough information for this legislation in order to go ahead with it, because I think if we do legislate we have to know what we're legislating. I think somehow we have a consensus that we don't want human cloning. We know that it's problematic by itself, but you can't really clone a person. You can't have an identical person, because the environments are so different and so on. The bodies may be the same, but the person will be different. I think we know that. So that's just the point I wanted to make. Sorry if I didn't ask a question.

The Chairman: Dr. Scorsone.

Dr. Suzanne Rozell Scorsone: I certainly take your point about the responsibility of the minister and the position of a mayor in actually doing something himself. This is, with respect, a little bit different, in that already the related ministers, the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Health, will have been involved in the passing of the legislation, which is in a way analogous to designing the dump, as it were.

So once that's already done, it's a question of then implementing the policy that the minister was involved in setting up. If it were the case that the minister or the Attorney General were involved in the decision for every charge with respect to every provision of the Criminal Code, then I would say yes, it would be analogous right down the line and would be applicable across the board. I would fully agree.

But since it appears that Parliament does make a distinction between those cases where the Attorney General is involved and those cases where the Attorney General is not involved, and that distinction, from what Dr. Somerville was saying, is largely concerned with whether or not it can be ensured that the implementation will not be politicized, or unjustly done or inappropriately done, then it seems to me that if the legislation is clear enough, the minister need not be involved. He or she would not be charged. There would be not that level of responsibility such as would be analogous to the mayor's position that you were describing quite rightly. Rather, it's a case of treating this as an issue in which evidence and the normal judicial process is sufficient and the implementation of the law that Parliament has arrived at cannot be subject to political pressure from any direction, whatever that direction might be.

• 1040

There are two boxes among the provisions of the Criminal Code: those that involve the Attorney General and those that don't. I'm saying to stick it in the box with the things that don't.

Mr. Ovid Jackson: It seems to me we'll have to listen to what the legal department will have to say about that.

The Chairman: You're a man of great confidence in the legal system.

Dr. Somerville.

Dr. Margaret Somerville: Can I just raise something I forgot to bring to the committee's attention? It's about the wording of proposed paragraph 286.1(1)(a), where it says: “the same genetic information as a living or deceased human being”. If you look at the homicide sections of the Criminal Code, I'm not sure whether or not those would apply to this when it went into the Criminal Code, but “human being” is defined as a child who has been separated from its mother, which involves the definition of whether or not the navel, the string, is cut, etc.

One of the ways in which clones are being formed is by gonadal tissue of aborted fetuses. That's being used for human primordial stem cells, which we have to work out. I'm not sure whether or not they would be regarded as human clones. I would defer to my scientific colleagues on that. But if you took this legislation and you interpret a human being as it is currently interpreted in the Criminal Code and then you ask whether it would cover gonadal tissue from aborted fetuses, I don't think it would.

The Chairman: Okay. It looks like a couple of people want to comment on that. We'll go to Dr. Carter first and then to Dr. Scorsone.

Dr. Ronald Carter: I think it's this kind of comment that reinforces my argument that you would have trouble enforcing this even for the outcome we all think is desirable.

The Chairman: If you have that definition, why would that be difficult?

Dr. Ronald Carter: You would not be able to take care of every new advance in techniques. They are exploding all over the world.

The Chairman: Does that mean you shouldn't try?

Dr. Ronald Carter: We're trying, we're all trying. This is this process, I agree.

The Chairman: Dr. Scorsone.

Dr. Suzanne Rozell Scorsone: I was under the impression that in the wording of the legislation, with respect, it also says “or a zygote, embryo or foetus”. However you define the human being, and at whatever point you define the human being as being recognized in law, this legislation nonetheless covers everybody from the get-go. It starts with zygote.

The Chairman: This is what, about two weeks?

Dr. Suzanne Rozell Scorsone: No, it starts at conception, depending on how you cut it, either from the penetration of the sperm or from syngamy, from the joining of the nuclei of the sperm and the ovum, which is basically when replication has occurred and you have a two-cell stage. At any rate, anything that would be of any relevance to human cloning is covered here, as far as I can see.

Dr. Margaret Somerville: Exactly. Yes, I'm wrong on that.

The Chairman: Don't admit it so readily. That's the chair's job.

Ms. Miller.

Ms. Fiona Miller: If I could reply to some of Dr. Jackson's concerns—

Mr. Ovid Jackson: Light on the doctor.

Ms. Fiona Miller: Okay.

The Chairman: I gave him that title for being here today.

Ms. Fiona Miller: I think we should use that title for everybody.

About this business of the minister, with due respect, I think there's a bit of confusion about the minister's responsibility and the Attorney General's discretion. The minister is responsible for upholding the law in the same way that you suggested the mayor should be responsible.

Mr. Ovid Jackson: Or answer questions in the House.

Ms. Fiona Miller: Or answer questions, but for upholding the law.

• 1045

For example, in the situation of the blood scandal, the ministers of health are legally responsible for upholding the law. Whether or not subsection (6) is in this legislation, which gives discretion about prosecution to the Attorney General, that does not remove that responsibility to uphold the laws of the country. I think that's one point, although you may certainly want further clarification from the lawyers, but that's my understanding.

I do want to make a point about this business of consensus versus human rights. I do not think we—I certainly, and I think many of us here—are presenting a position that is based on majoritarian decision making. I am not standing before you and arguing to ban cloning because the latest poll says 51.5% of the population is opposed. I would not say applaud reproductive cloning if 79% of the population was in support.

I am making an argument that is premised on fundamental issues of human rights and substantive equality. I think that is the argument we are making, that people who are the results of these technologies are not products, are not means to ends, but are ends in themselves, with fundamental human rights. I won't get into the places where we'll dissent about the status of the embryo; I think we agree about the people who are the end result. That is the fundamental nature of the argument here. It is not about consensus, and that's very important.

Finally, I agree there are all sorts of issues of language, and I have included in my little write-up here a couple of suggested language changes. In response to our discussion, I would make some further suggestions. Yes, I think some language changes could be useful here for clarification purposes. But if there is the will, then this committee has the competence to make a very, very solid effort at producing a satisfactory bill that has the principled intent that I think many of us here uphold. That is not just reproductive cloning, but also, in my opinion, germ-line genetic engineering. I don't think we should just be defeatist about the obvious and inevitable problems with language that are going to emerge and that, yes, probably need some more clarification and work. I think that work can be done and this bill can be made credible.

The Chairman: Ms. Miller, I don't want to sound in any way patronizing, but if you have that wording, we'd really appreciate it. And of course if you make it available to the committee through the clerk, then all the members will have the benefit of that, and the sooner you get it there, the sooner we can consider it.

Second, I guess one of the reasons why Bill C-247 is before this committee for a second time is that there is great interest in generating the debate necessary for having a fundamental discussion about some of the principles, and some of the objectives as well, of both this bill and initially—if I might, Madam Picard—Bill C-47, which died on the order paper in 1997. The discussion is still ongoing, and we think it's worth while. We're spending some time on it. Maybe it's a fraction of the time that should be required, but I think that was the intent of Madam Picard, to keep the debate going.

Dr. Somerville.

Dr. Margaret Somerville: I'd just like to endorse that, because I think one really important thing is that you can't do ethics by majority vote, particularly in these areas that have such vast, long-term consequences for humanity. We've got to be very careful; we've got an enormous responsibility as the present generation who has to decide on what we do about this.

One of the things I'm concerned about, and I actually personally face this a lot when I have to, which I do all the time, deal with wonderful scientists like Dr. Carter, who can come up and say but look at all the good we can do, and what you're suggesting would prohibit us from doing that. Then usually you get an absolutely heart-wrenching personal case, and one of those that's used in human cloning is the dying child that could be saved by cloning the child and using a bone marrow transplant from the cloned child. People say why would you prohibit those parents from doing that? It's the ultimate love for trying to save their child; it's modern miracle medicine at its best; it's doing all good things.

• 1050

But we're neither comfortable with nor very good at engaging in the fundamental issues debate that has to go on about human cloning, partly, I think, because we always feel as though we are veering off into religion. For a lot of us, that feels politically not correct, particularly at the public policy governance level.

I just happen to have three people I looked at. One was Emile Durkheim, who said “The religion of humanity is the belief in the inherent dignity and worth of human life as the only cohesive bond in a diverse and secular world. It's the last belief that unites us as a human community and serves as the essential basis of our social and moral order.” So what we have to realize, for instance, in deciding on human cloning is what is our most fundamental belief in the worth of human life and how it may be transmitted.

The big question we have to face is not what we will do, because we've got just such extraordinary things we can do. The biggest question for us is what we will decide we will not do even though we can do it. Human cloning is really the paradigm example of how we will answer that question.

The Chairman: Okay, I'm going to go in a second to Madam Desjarlais, who's been waiting patiently as well, but I'm going to allow Dr. Scorsone a really brief comment and Dr. Carter an equally brief comment. You see my fingers, because I'm one of those people who functions well with images because I don't understand words that well.

Dr. Suzanne Rozell Scorsone: Dr. Somerville made my little one, so I'm going to shoehorn another one in here.

The Chairman: Somehow I was afraid you would.

Dr. Suzanne Rozell Scorsone: First of all, the royal commission on new reproductive technologies was an entirely secular body. I don't quite honestly know what the religious views of most of my fellow commissioners were. Yet we reached consensus on the matter of human cloning, across whatever that spectrum was. I don't even know what it was. So it's capable of a broad recognition of the fundamental essential principles even on the basis of consensus, even though the principles pre-exist the consensus.

In other words, it was that obvious to us, including issues like directed donation. You could clone a child—you know, carry a fetus until the point where you have liver tissue or bone marrow tissue or whatever, and then abort the child and use the tissue. That's one of the scenarios that was thrown out in discussion or mooted by some people. But that then creates a human being, human entity—whatever it is people choose to call it. It creates something that is human that is for the use of someone else. So we, as a group, felt that this was unacceptable, that you just don't do that, on the basis of fundamental principles, without any direct recourse to religion.

Many people from different backgrounds can reach the same policy perspective, as is done in this House on a regular basis, from different premises, from different sets of moral reasoning, perhaps, in some ways, but nonetheless they reach the same policy or legislative recommendation. That is where the rubber hits the road for you.

It seems to me there is no contradiction between this piece of legislation and the fact that there will be—it is mooted in the various media—legislation coming further down the pike. The two can co-exist. There is no contradiction between them. One need not say this must not happen because the other is coming. It's a question of the prudential judgment of Parliament as to whether perhaps it is desired that the Criminal Code cover this, because it is so societally unacceptable, and then the whole field be amplified by subsequent legislation that is at the discretion of this House. But I see no contradiction.

The Chairman: I'm so glad you finally got to the brief part here.

Dr. Carter.

Dr. Ronald Carter: I'll try to keep it brief.

The first comment is that I think this is by its very nature a political process and one that depends on consensus. You used that term yourself.

• 1055

You can't, up until recently, pick your child; and now actually you can, to a certain degree, in certain circumstances. What probably will never be possible is to pick your parents. I think this comes to the heart of it. There are some things we are all agreed that we don't want to see, but it all depends on the circumstance. You can argue that it's not possible and not acceptable to murder somebody, but in World War I our government conscripted people to go and kill people, and our country wasn't at risk. It depended on the circumstance.

What we are saying is we don't want to see human cloning, but this bill might, in some uses, prevent, in some circumstances, things that our society would like to see. That's why a regulatory framework needs to be enacted. We need to have very careful delineation of what we as a society can live with and allow to happen under certain circumstances. I'm not against the intent of this bill in any way. It's the process and the wording.

I look forward to the bill in the fall.

The Chairman: No, but we have to deal with the one we have before us now.

Madam Desjarlais.

Ms. Bev Desjarlais (Churchill, NDP): Thank you.

First off, I want to apologize. My waiting patience, as you might have noticed, was running out a few times, and I want to apologize for not having been able to be totally attentive to all the discussion that went on. I hope I won't be repeating things that have been mentioned or asked.

I really appreciated all the positions. Obviously it's certainly going to be exactly what we, as members of Parliament, will hear from our constituents. There's no doubt in my mind, every perspective that you gave is there. I appreciated Ms. Miller's comments that we certainly shouldn't be deciding this on the basis of the majority poll. Had that been the case, we would have accepted all the medical research that took place in Germany based on what the majority would have been at that time.

But in acknowledging that, I recognize that we also have abortion legislation, and I can't help but see the two kind of intermingled, of accepting one and not the other. And I recognize that acceptance is there for the exact reasons you gave, Dr. Carter—people have realized there's supposed good out of allowing some things so that someone else won't be injured. When we talk about the embryo, I personally cannot help see one and the other as much the same.

So I recognize that as we have these discussions, the life-saving benefit you talk about is certainly there. I know numerous people who have had family illnesses, who if they could have their children not suffer from those same illnesses I see their decision would be much along the line of the personal decision that an individual would have to make deciding on whether or not they have an abortion. So for me that's the context of how I see it.

It's interesting to note, Dr. Carter, that you recognize the need for something to be there and that you're hoping that legislation in the fall will be there. But as we've seen indicated here, this legislation has been before us, or before Parliament, once before. Nothing happened with it. And I think the timeliness of having something done is here and now, because it has been indicated that the U.S. has gone ahead and said certain embryonic stem cell research is allowable. I don't think we, as Canadians, can let that decision for Canadians be made in the U.S., and that certainly will be the case if we don't take some action, recognizing—and I think the committee, as will parliamentarians, I would hope, recognizes—the concerns that are there from yourself, Dr. Carter. So I don't have questions so much as just having appreciated all the different perspectives.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Madam Desjarlais, obviously your comments have generated a desire to responsd, so we're going to have some witnesses' answers.

Dr. Somerville.

• 1100

Dr. Margaret Somerville: First of all, we don't have abortion legislation. That's one of the issues.

Secondly, you can't assume that the same ethical rules apply to not having a child as to having one. You see, what you're dealing with in cloning is what the ethics should be surrounding the creation of a child. What you're dealing with in abortion is the ethics surrounding a decision not to have a child. Those sets of rules are not at all necessarily the same.

The other thing is, if you look at abortion, it's very interesting that as soon as we take the focus off the woman's right to decide what happens to her body, which is the focus that we use to socially legitimate abortion, and we put it on the fetus.... For instance, if the woman says “I don't want this baby, not because I don't want to be pregnant, but because I don't want a girl”, we immediately say that's unacceptable. So what you have here is that you haven't a focus on the woman's right and her right to determine what happens to herself; you have an out-of-body experience that involves a human entity and that doesn't involve those other conflicts. So it is a very different situation from abortion.

There are certain things we can bring from one to the other—

Ms. Bev Desjarlais: Can I just clarify? I wasn't intending that on the issue of abortion; I was intending that on the embryo and what should happen with the embryo. That was the gist of what I was trying to say.

Dr. Margaret Somerville: Yes, I know, but when we look at what happens to the embryo in abortion, that is a secondary effect of respecting the woman's right to decide. As soon as we focus on that child, we tend to be much less comfortable with that decision.

So what I'm suggesting to you is that I think abortion only goes so far in telling us what we should do with early human life that isn't intrinsically connected with a woman's body.

The Chairman: This is odd. Nobody was jumping up to say something.

Dr. Scorsone.

Dr. Suzanne Rozell Scorsone: I think what Dr. Somerville says is quite true. I've seen many people who disagree on the pro-choice and pro-life spectrum nonetheless solidly in agreement once the question of the conflict with the aspirations of a particular woman are removed from the equation. Then you have a concern for what is the significance of the embryo, the zygote, the fetus, which is seen as, yes, of significance in itself.

Also, usually these come forth from a woman. Certainly the ovum does. So there's a question of this reproductive capacity of women being industrialized somehow and alienated from women as well. So there are many who, from a feminist perspective, see this as a problem not only from the perspective of the embryo or the zygote or the fetus, but also from the perspective of women. You find consensus on this one among people who disagree on some other important issues.

I'd also like to reiterate what I said in my first presentation. We don't have to square off between the treatment possibilities and the unacceptability of use of zygotes or embryos or other reproductive entities for experimentation in the sense of cloning. There are other alternatives. We can get stem cells other ways. We can get cell lines for pancreatic tissue for the islet cells for the production of insulin. We can get them other ways. We can produce these things through animal models; we can get human cell lines. There are many other ways we can do this. We can graft. We can do genetic treatments into cells, which can be implanted in the human brain, and these cells may contain genes that produce dopamine to counter Parkinson's disease. There are all sorts of ways one can do this without human cloning.

It just means you have this rock in the middle of the road and you go around it. But we don't have to do the ethically unacceptable thing in order to get to the objective we want, which is treatment for major disorders. It may take us a little longer, it may take us a little more time, it may be a little less easy, but we can do it.

The Chairman: Okay.

Dr. Carter, and then I'm going to go back to Mr. Vellacott.

Dr. Ronald Carter: Very briefly, I want to point out that cell lines come from a living or dead person. They had to start somewhere.

Dr. Suzanne Rozell Scorsone: They don't have to be from an embryo.

Dr. Ronald Carter: Well, it says here: “contains the same genetic information as a living or deceased human being or a zygote, embryo or foetus”. Cell lines, all cell lines, if they're human, come from one of those categories.

Dr. Margaret Somerville: Yes, but it's only if you manipulate clones.

• 1105

Dr. Ronald Carter: Well, you know, I think that's the difficulty right there. If you're going to hold those cell lines as a possibility, as an alternative, that's where they come from.

Dr. Margaret Somerville: But that provision wouldn't apply to that, because if you got the cell line without manipulating an ovum, zygote, or embryo, there's no prohibition. You have to manipulate.

Dr. Ronald Carter: No, it says “that contains the same genetic information as a living or deceased...”.

Dr. Margaret Somerville: No, but you have to manipulate it.

The Chairman: Before I lose complete control over this, Dr. Carter, I wonder, is it also fair to say that sometimes many of these cells might come from cancer cells that have been removed, that they can come from any types of cells?

Dr. Ronald Carter: Yes, they come from a wide variety of sources.

Ms. Fiona Miller: But this is for the purposes of producing a zygote or embryo. It's not as vague as you're suggesting.

Dr. Ronald Carter: I understand that, but again, this goes back to my point of interpretation. If you were to try to enforce this, you'd get into this difficulty of how much do you interpret and how do you interpret it with respect to which technique?

The Chairman: Dr. Carter, normally as the chair I find myself as a defender of witnesses against the attacks of members at the table. This is unique for me to try to come to your defence against the other witnesses. This is a technique I'm not very practised at.

Dr. Ronald Carter: This is a difference of opinion, and I understand that. As I said, I'm here to speak for people who have medical conditions, and that is our perspective. We don't want to be shut off from possible therapeutic benefit for people who are at risk, and it's a question of interpretation. That's the only reason I'm here.

The Chairman: As a committee, we're interested in hearing everybody's views, obviously, because it's by hearing everybody's view that we can shape a collective view. I'm not talking about consensus or majority view, but we want to hear everybody, and we don't have a position, but we're hearing some.

Ms. Fiona Miller: I would just say, very briefly, that with all due respect, Dr. Carter, you are not here representing people with a medical condition; you are here representing the Canadian College of Medical Geneticists.

Dr. Ronald Carter: That is true.

Ms. Fiona Miller: That is a professional organization. It's a very, very different issue.

Dr. Ronald Carter: That is true, but as part of my work, the people I see, the people walking down the hall, the consultations I'm asked to attend, what I deal with are medical diseases.

A voice: As do many of us here.

The Chairman: I suspect it could probably go on for a little bit. I wonder if you can use that proverbial shoehorn in a minute or two, Dr. Somerville and Dr. Scorsone, because Mr. Vellacott really wants to get his in as well.

Mr. Vellacott.

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: I find a little bit unsettling in terms of the comments, maybe unintended or otherwise, or maybe intentional, the approach that says we need to do it in a regulatory fashion because we're the “medical experts.” That might tend to a little bit of elitism.

I pick it up in some of your remarks, Dr. Carter. I don't know if you intend it that way, but it would certainly serve to complexify and make out that it's really a lot of very complex matter.

Then we move it off from anything done here through a committee in a bill like this. It really kiboshes this thing altogether. Then we get into this regulatory thing where elites, and hopefully not arrogant elites, but bodies there take care of it because they know best and it's outside the public realm of discussion, if you will.

Dr. Ronald Carter: That's not what I'm asking for. I'm asking for both components. I'm not trying to be elitist. I'm not trying to represent an elitist body.

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: Are you making it more complex than in fact it is? Would you find consensus among your peers?

Dr. Ronald Carter: I am saying that the situation is complex. I would like to see a component of prohibitionary legislation and regulatory, working hand in hand. I think this bill would be difficult to enforce to prohibit things that we agree we don't want to see, and I think it would be difficult to undertake some techniques that we might wish to see as a society, if this bill were enforced.

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: If I talk to your peers with the same kinds of credentials, medical expertise, and profession as you, would I find, to a person, that they would say it's every bit as complex as you make it to be, or would some of them say no, Dr. Carter is seeing things, reading into things, seeing nuances here that are not by other people? Are you totally representative of your medical peers in respect to the degree or level of complexity that you perceive in this report?

• 1110

Dr. Ronald Carter: I am trying to be representative. It's very difficult to be representative in such an issue that is so personal and so complex in all of the principles that are in question.

The Chairman: Just a second. Mr. Vellacott, I guess we—

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: I want to go to my other question.

The Chairman: Okay, but I guess we have to accept that if someone is coming here in an official capacity for an organization, that individual reflects the thinking of that organization. There are probably differences there, but we have to assume that's the official position.

Dr. Ronald Carter: If I could—

The Chairman: Just a second, Dr. Carter.

The legislation always precedes the regulation. So for us as Ontarians, we always expect there will be regulations married to the legislation, or following from and flowing from the legislation. So we don't have a problem with regulations. I'm wondering whether that distinction was already part of your—

Dr. Ronald Carter: Yes, it is.

The Chairman: It is? Part of your thought process?

Dr. Ronald Carter: I'm expecting that there will be a regulatory.... I'm speaking to the process. I'm trying to participate in the process, as far as my—

The Chairman: But you were saying earlier on, and I think a couple of the witnesses and colleagues also were trying to corner you on the issue of whether you were in favour of a purely regulatory approach or whether you were accepting the legislative approach. I think it was presented more or less as an either/or situation, and I think you accepted one as opposed to the other, but—

Dr. Ronald Carter: No.

The Chairman: —they're actually together.

Dr. Ronald Carter: To go back to my written statement, which was approved by the president of our society and other members of the board of directors, I asked for a combination of prohibition and regulation. We asked that when this bill, if as we hope and has been promised, comes to debate in the fall, that's what we would like to see.

The Chairman: Okay. Then I'll let Mr. Vellacott finish his question and then I'll go back, because I know Dr. Somerville wants to say something.

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: I don't have the written statement, but I assume that was distributed.

A voice: No, we just got it today.

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: No. Then getting to my first question here is unless there's a preciseness—and I would ask it to all of you, maybe Dr. Carter to start—or exactness that I'm not aware of written up in medical journals and maybe more popular publications as well, it seems to me that there's risk associated with this thing of germ line alteration much greater than those surrounding the non-germ-line or somatic cell gene therapy, because mistakes affect all of the embryo cells.

An inserted gene with this germ-line thing, if I understand it correctly, could interfere with some of the other vital gene functions, or maybe—and you could correct me on this—could conceivably activate some genes associated with cancer, other disorders, kind of like on a chess board, when you move one piece and it affects the value or functions of all the other pieces. I guess in medical terms, if somebody's getting medical doctors two, three, and four counselling them, giving them medication without the knowledge of the others, these contradictions in exponential fashion, you don't know what it's all going to do.

I guess I'm wondering if you can assure me that when you go in and do a germ-line genetic alteration, you can predict and know exactly and can guarantee that there's not going to be unknown adverse perverse implications. Is it that precise? Is it so exact that you can say if you do this it will take care of cystic fibrosis and that it's not in the next generation going to activate cancer cells or something even worse? Can you guarantee that in a germ-line genetic alteration fashion?

• 1115

Dr. Ronald Carter: I don't think anybody could guarantee that, but I do think that with progress in the field it's possible you could get to a situation where it might be acceptable to try. For example, you could look at other medical procedures that were considered unacceptable and impossible, yet they have come into common use. You can go back as far as transferring blood from one person to another. It came with benefits; it came with risks. But it's commonly—

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: But that's not an actual genetic situation, is it? I mean, it's—

Dr. Ronald Carter: It turns out that there are circulating cells there that are capable of living a long time, that they don't.... You know, there are studies—

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: Is there not a fundamental difference, though? That would not be genetic.

Dr. Ronald Carter: I'm trying to use it as an example of a technique that was initially imperfect and was considered unacceptable for that reason and that then came into common and acceptable use with benefit and risks under certain accepted circumstances.

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: Okay.

Dr. Ronald Carter: I can't guarantee that there will be no ill effects from research and medical practice in this area of new reproductive technology. Nobody can guarantee that.

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: It's fairly precise and exact now, that—

Dr. Ronald Carter: Not now. It might be in future, but it's not now. I agree entirely. But there is a potential for benefit. There is a potential for risk. The situation will change in the future.

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: Okay. I guess the other—

Dr. Ronald Carter: I don't think we have a difference of opinion here.

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: Okay. I just wanted to—

The Chairman: I think he answered your question.

Dr. Somerville, then Ms. Miller.

Dr. Margaret Somerville: Yes, I have three short points.

First, it's very important to identify that you only start talking about risk and what are the relative risks and benefits and whether you should prohibit something from an ethical perspective because it's too risky, once you've decided that the intervention that creates those risks is not in itself inherently wrong. So you've got two potential interventions under this bill. You have human reproductive cloning in the first part and you've got germ-line intervention in the second part.

Now, the question you've raised that you were just asking Dr. Carter about really is.... You've assumed that germ-line intervention is not inherently wrong, or otherwise you wouldn't be talking about risks. So that's one line of argument on it. You see, there's a difference between saying it's ethically unacceptable because it's too risky and saying it's ethically unacceptable because we should never interfere with the human germ cell line, no matter if there's no risk and no matter there are huge benefits, that it's just wrong to do that. So it's a two-stage analysis. The same thing with human cloning. You only get to talk about risks after you've decided that what you're going to do that does carry risks isn't in itself inherently wrong.

The second thing is if it is inherently wrong it should then be prohibited. Then you don't need regulation, because you don't go regulating something that is in itself inherently wrong. The fact that you're regulating it means it's not inherently wrong but it could be, used in certain ways. We have to be very careful when we make these statements that we know what they mean in deeper terms.

The third thing is with respect to proposed section 286.1. The question Dr. Carter is really raising is whether this is too vague to be either valid criminal legislation or able to be implemented. I would suggest to you that under normal rules of criminal statutory interpretation it certainly is not too vague. What you require is that a clear act is raised, which is.... The first line says “manipulate an ovum, zygote or embryo”; you require a defined mens rea, which is here: “for the purpose of producing a zygote or embryo”, etc. So it wouldn't cover your cell lines that have identical cells providing you didn't create those through manipulating an ovum, zygote, or embryo for this purpose. So it's very clear. I don't think there's a problem with vagueness in that.

The Chairman: Thank you, Dr. Somerville.

Ms. Miller.

Ms. Fiona Miller: How do I follow that? I wanted to say that bearing in mind your argument that we shouldn't in many ways talk about risks if we think it's wrong—

The Chairman: You're talking to Dr. Carter now, am I right? So when you are saying your—

Ms. Fiona Miller: No, sorry, Dr. Somerville's argument—

The Chairman: Okay. Thank you.

Ms. Fiona Miller: —that we shouldn't talk about risks if we think that it's fundamentally wrong.

Bearing that in mind and believing that it's fundamentally wrong, I'm still going to address minimally this question of risks, partially because I do think it's important that we identify, when we talk about treatment with respect to germ-line genetic engineering, as I think Mr. Vellacott clearly is suggesting, that this is a very fundamentally different form of medical intervention. We have historically and still do intervene somatically on the person's body who is sick. That is our form of treatment.

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It's a radical transformation within medical practice not to treat all of the human species, which is in effect what germ-line genetic engineering does. If you do introduce changes into the germ line of an individual, you are not just treating that individual. You simply cannot evaluate this question as though you were simply treating an individual.

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: In defence of myself, I want to say that I wasn't just talking minor risk, but of the human genome, the human gene pool. We're not only talking of minor little things here and there. But you picked up on that.

Ms. Fiona Miller: Right. So I think this becomes important. I also want to note, because this is a standard caveat, that we interfere with the human genome all the time. Industrial pollutants and radiation are constantly mutating the human gene pool. This is true. However, there is a very big difference between deliberate engineering and the sort of accidental processes that are part of really natural selection. There is a fundamental difference, and we shouldn't be deluded by that.

I also think there is a way in which the model of the genome we're using when we talk about this cut and splice and insert and turn on and trigger and turn off is a little bit simplistic. It really is a molecular genetics more of the seventies than of the nineties, where we are talking less about gene action than about gene activation. It's much more complicated. I am not a molecular biologist. It would be nice for you to have a theoretical molecular biologist here to speak to this. But there is a lot of writing on the growing disjuncture between what molecular biologists are starting to think about in terms of the genomes for a complex interactive way of functioning, versus a sort of linear sequence model that is still functioning within medical genetics to a substantial extent.

This is a very big problem, because those questions of risk you're raising can be contained as long as we really do believe that we cut out X and we insert it here, and it's a linear sequence and it's straightforward. However, if we do not conceive of the genome in that way—we conceive of it as having a far more complex regulatory interactive process—then this is not necessarily going to work. And we can't imagine, we don't know, what the emergent effects are from that.

So this is a very big problem of moral.... There is a scientific issue here about changing models of genetic processes that I'm not certain medical genetics has caught up to.

The Chairman: Thank you, Ms. Miller.

[Translation]

You have the floor, Ms. Picard.

Mrs. Pauline Picard: I would just like to make a comment, Mr. Chairman. I deplore the fact that no government members are here today. Whatever the reason may be, I think they show a lack of respect for our witnesses.

The Chairman: It is election day.

Mrs. Pauline Picard: Yes, Mr. Chairman, but I'm sure you will agree that this is a very serious discussion that we have been waiting to have for a long time. Even if there is a provincial election today, the role of federal members of Parliament is to do their job here in Ottawa. I deplore this situation. I think it shows disrespect for our eminent witnesses.

The Chairman: You are right. This is a serious subject, and the fact that the chair is here is an indication of the calibre of our witnesses. Thank you.

Mrs. Pauline Picard: My intent is not to minimize your role, Mr. Chairman, but the fact is that not even the parliamentary secretary is here to hear from the witnesses. That shows an incredible lack of respect.

The Chairman: Your comment has been noted.

Mrs. Pauline Picard: Yes.

I was at the World Health Organization when the convention to ban human cloning was passed. The Council of Europe has signed a resolution to ban human cloning, as has UNESCO. All these organizations, which represent many countries, have signed a convention to prohibit human cloning.

Here we are asking questions and studying individual cases to try to reach a clear position on prohibiting human cloning. I'm trying to understand what is going on.

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Ms. Somerville, you said that at the moment there were two codes of ethics, depending on one's point of view. Currently, I favour the code of ethics that upholds respect for human life. Why should we talk so much about germ lines and all of that? Did the World Health Organization and the Council of Europe go so far in their discussions that led to the ban on human cloning? That is what I would like to know.

[English]

The Chairman: Do you have that information at hand?

Dr. Margaret Somerville: Yes.

The Chairman: Okay.

Dr. Margaret Somerville: Why they've done it? I'm familiar with the declarations you're talking about. It's the protocol to the bioethics convention of the Council of Europe and UNESCO's declaration on the human genone. In fact I believe there is other legislation pending, or which has been passed, in Switzerland and I think Germany.

It's a very interesting question. I think there's a multiplicity of factors that answer it. We in North America, particularly in the ethics base that we use to analyse what we would do and what we don't do.... My view, and I could be wrong on this, is that we are much more individualistic. We have much more a primary presumption of liberty, whether it's to carry out scientific research, to choose the medical treatment we want, to refuse what we don't want, than you still find in Europe. Europe is still in science and medicine more paternalistically based. There is perhaps a greater acceptance in Europe of general declarations that we as a society think that something like this is wrong, without the same weight given to the countervailing arguments that we would give in North America. There is a genuine debate here.

For instance, I say that I think human cloning is inherently wrong and we shouldn't do it. But I have to accept and recognize that there is loss of benefits for humankind by doing that. We're going to inhibit scientific research. We're going to lose the benefits we would get from doing that, but I don't think we should do it. But in Europe I think it's more that they would focus simply on this as something that humans shouldn't do; we need to maintain this profound respect for human life.

Here, maybe because we are very pluralistic societies, perhaps more so than Europe, we don't see the necessity to the same extent at the societal level to maintain that profound respect for human life. I think we think that as along as every individual doesn't do anything they think contravenes this, then it will be protected. I think that's wrong. I think as a society we have to draw lines that will protect it. I think Europe is more prepared to do that than we are. I think there is a whole host of reasons why that's true.

[Translation]

Mrs. Pauline Picard: Everyone knows that the Minister of Health will be tabling a bill in the fall. That is an open secret—the minister has announced it. We also know that the task force working on this future bill is in the process of adopting the model used in Great Britain. Are you familiar with that model? What steps have been taken by Great Britain as regards improper genetic manipulations? Has it banned human cloning? What else has it banned?

[English]

Dr. Margaret Somerville: Britain has the Human Embriology Act, and under that they've set up I think it's called the Human Embriology Authority.

Dr. Ronald Carter: HFEA. Human Fertilization and Embriology Authority.

Dr. Margaret Somerville: Yes. That's a very diverse group of world-recognized people with various expertise that's relevant to deciding these sorts of issues.

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I must admit I haven't looked at the act recently, but my recollection is that the act does prohibit human cloning. Actually, the British act was the second one. The first one that sort of tried to regulate this area, mainly because all of the early reproductive technology was developed in Australia, was called the Infertility Regulation Act, in Victoria. They did the same thing. They set up a regulatory authority.

Those bodies rule on specific research proposals that involve research on human embryos. Originally the Victoria act, for instance, also prohibited that. Later on, an argument was put that you could regard the very early embryo—Dr. Scorsone referred to it—before a process called syngamy, when the new chromosomes are lined up on spindles, as simply a mixture of a sperm and an ovum, and therefore it would be morally acceptable to experiment on that.

Later on, of course, they developed other rules. A lot of authorities now seem to allow human embryo experimentation up to 14 days, for a variety of reasons. That's taken as a compromise between prohibiting human embryo research and allowing some early research. Not everybody, by any means, agrees with that.

It's again a matter of saying when it's not something everybody wants or something we have decided to prohibit, you can still do wrong things with the other things you might do. So we still need to have sufficient regulation of those things. Those are regulatory authorities. In a way you can look at them as doing ethics through applying ethical process, rather than saying we have any definite ethical rules that will simply decide this without the need for process.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Thank you.

Ms. Desjarlais.

[English]

Ms. Bev Desjarlais: Thank you. I just want to comment first.

It was interesting when you mentioned the blood transfusion or the issue of transfer of blood. It actually reinforced for me your point about there being alternatives, rather than using embryo research.

A number years back, if I recall correctly, certain groups of people who did not want to have blood transfusions argued there wasn't enough being done to have an alternative. Very quickly after that we all of a sudden saw blood volumizers come into hospitals everywhere. It was because they were forced to do so. It reinforced for me that if we were to allow manipulation, so to speak, there would probably be less emphasis on finding an alternative, if we were to accept that it was okay to go ahead and do it because it might be seen as the easy way out.

I have a question for you, Dr. Carter. Do you think it's okay—just personally or representing the group you're with, however you want to come across here—to use human embryos, making decisions to do something with this embryo, to benefit another?

Dr. Ronald Carter: I just want to respond to the one other thing you commented on first. We don't take the easy way out; we try to take the best way at the time. Things change, advances come and it becomes better, safer and more beneficial to try another method in time, and then we accept that one. The process of medicine is comparing what is an accepted and known treatment to a new one, deciding which one is better, and going with the better one. In general, we try very hard to adhere to that philosophy.

I personally have great difficulty with the concept of using embryo cells to benefit other people. But the other difficulty I have is I'm not the person taking home the baby. I'm not the pregnant woman. I'm not the family that has to deal with the disease. Who am I to make that decision for them? If I can act as an advocate for those people at risk, there may be in some aspects of these techniques situations where, as a society, we finally agree it's acceptable under certain circumstances. I'm asking for that kind of framework in legislation to permit that question to be asked and addressed.

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I personally have great difficulty with, and I think our society is quite opposed to, the concept of cloning people. I don't think there's any argument about that at all. We are in shades of grey as far as variations of using embryo cells, and my own personal convictions are rather strong. I'm not comfortable with it at all.

The Chairman: Ms. Miller.

Ms. Fiona Miller: At the risk of complexifying this more, it's important we remember we are not debating embryo research, which is a very large, significant and important topic, in this bill. This bill is specifically attempting to prohibit producing cloned embryos, fetuses, children, people, and deliberating producing embryos, fetuses, children, people who have had their germs mined, engineered.

So I think it's important we recognize that. There's a whole other realm of embryo research that does not touch on these issues.

The Chairman: It's fair to point that out, Ms. Miller. You'll recall, of course, that Bill C-247 is but a small part of Bill C-47 when we last had a debate. I dare say that the presentation of Bill C-247 has served at least one useful purpose. Because it's a much more focused debate today, a lot more attention has been given to one of the 13 prohibitions.

Ms. Fiona Miller: I'm not complaining. I'm just sort of saying we really need to keep that focus.

To go back a little, I don't know if this is useful, but I just want to remind us of some of the limits of the U.K. legislation. One of the reasons why the Criminal Code is so relevant in the Canadian context and not in the British context is because of the federal-provincial division of powers and the very significant autonomy of the provinces. This is key to it.

Another very important consideration is the very strong charter. I and many Canadians are very proud it because, unlike the U.K. and parts of Australia, you do not restrict on the basis of the marital status or sexual orientation of the people who want to access these technologies. This would not be an acceptable model in Canada, despite public opinion polls to the contrary.

So those are some very important elements of the Canadian situation that encourage us to really grapple with this locally, as we are doing.

The Chairman: Dr. Scorsone, a brief comment.

Dr. Suzanne Rozell Scorsone: I'll try.

I think the legislative wording is clear. I'm going to put on my anthropological hat here. There are so many different groups that come to this piece of legislation and all the related areas. For those who are involved in directly using some of these technologies, it is natural that they wouldn't like to have external limits placed on their activities. They might not want to do certain sorts of things themselves, but they don't want to be told there are things they can't do.

With all the goodwill in the world, it's possible for various groups to have tunnel vision. The guy whose only tool is a hammer thinks everything's a nail, even when all he wants to do is help. But once something is permitted, it becomes entrenched, as Ms. Desjarlais said.

Look at the combustion engine. Something becomes entrenched, then the investment goes there from the various corporations, and trying innovative other ways becomes far more difficult or marginalized, until you run into a situation where everything is polluted and people are starting to look for electric engines, for example. But it takes reaching that point. It takes a tainted blood problem before people start looking for volumizers.

So I would far rather see us not close off the other avenues. We should say “Okay, this is unacceptable. There are other ways. Put your money and your effort into finding other ways that are acceptable to everyone and don't cause this kind of controversy.” If everybody can agree on it, then we don't have a problem.

The Chairman: Thank you.

I will give the last question here to Mr. Vellacott, but it's going to be really brief.

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Mr. Maurice Vellacott: Right. I appreciated Bev's comments about necessity being the mother of invention. Putting brakes on some things precipitates some very vigorous, maybe ramped-up efforts in regard to the non-germ line.

I'd like to get back to Dr. Carter's mention of switching on and off. If you went with this germ line and you, say, switched on insertion so as to prevent cystic fibrosis, I take it that what you inferred is that you could then switch it so that it's not passed on to the next generation. You don't have this possible bizarre kind of complication down through the generations. You could switch it off later before they get into the reproductive stage, if they are a promiscuous teen. I don't know when you'd switch it off. Would it be just before they're going to move into puberty?

Dr. Ronald Carter: In effect, that kind of decision can be made now through pre-implantation diagnostics. Somebody who has a mutation, for example, can implant an embryo that has been selected not to have the mutation. On one level you could say that you have inserted the gene. The person might be capable of making different types of eggs or sperm, and you select a zygote that doesn't have that mutation or that inserted gene.

What I'm saying is that in future there will be many ways in which that issue of turning on or off or putting a gene into the gene pool forever could be addressed, ways we don't even see now.

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: I'd be interested in hearing from the other witnesses if they feel that it's as precise as turning a light switch on and off. Is it that exact?

Ms. Fiona Miller: I think we're answering slightly different questions in the sense that I think, Dr. Carter, what you're trying to suggest is that selecting zygotes is analogous to selecting genes. I think the pre-implantation diagnosis question is quite separate from this issue of—

Dr. Ronald Carter: But it's a technique that achieves the same end.

Ms. Fiona Miller: No, but it doesn't.

Dr. Ronald Carter: With all due respect, a gene gets transmitted to the next generation by creating a child. Are we agreed?

Ms. Fiona Miller: Yes.

Dr. Ronald Carter: Okay. You can select an embryo for a particular genetic characteristic. It's done now. You let an embryo go to eight cells. You pull off two cells. You analyse them for the mutation. You keep the other six going. If the embryo doesn't have the mutation, you insert those six cells, and they turn into a normal baby. You have stopped the mutation from being transmitted to the next generation.

Mr. Maurice Vellacott: And you've not created complications or any impact that impinges on other—

Dr. Ronald Carter: No. They're normal babies. I'm just saying that's one way of achieving that, and it's possible now. I'm saying that in future there will probably be many other advances where you could achieve the same effect in many other ways. It's hard to predict what might be possible in the future.

The Chairman: I'm so happy that Mr. Vellacott asked a very brief and specific question and one that didn't generate any debate. I know the three others want to say something. I'm going to ask whether or not we're going down the same road, because I think this is.... No, okay.

Dr. Carter, in that example you just cited you're not really engaging in manipulation, are you?

Dr. Ronald Carter: No, it's a selection. I'm saying that if, for example, you inserted a gene for the purposes of gene therapy into an individual but you did not want it to go to the next generation, then you could stop it by embryo selection. That's possible now. I'm not saying whether or not it's acceptable or permissible, but it is possible.

The Chairman: I think we're going to be here probably for the rest of the afternoon, because some of your answers have even got the people at the table here involved. It's not our function to get involved in the debate. We want to hear what our witnesses have to say. I'm conscious of the fact that you've been very generous with both your time and your thoughts.

I'd like to do a couple of things. As we draw to a close, I'm going to ask my colleagues to stay behind for a moment or two. What I intend to do is adjourn this part of the meeting and then make a quick announcement that has nothing to do with this meeting.

It looks as if this is round one, so we'll go to Dr. Somerville, Ms. Miller, and then Dr. Scorsone.

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Dr. Margaret Somerville: I do want to just comment on that example of the embryo biopsy. What you're concerned with here ethically is not simply whether or not the outcome is the same, that you've chosen a particular child. What you're concerned with is whether or not the means we're using are acceptable. You need to argue the ethical acceptability of embryo biopsy. But that's a different issue from embryo acceptability and manipulation of the human germ line cell. So that's the first point.

The second point, Mr. Chairman, was that you did say that only one process was being debated in this bill. In fact, with respect, I think it's two: human cloning and germ-line cell intervention. I think it's very important to look at those two separately, because, again, the arguments on one are not necessarily the same as on the other.

Just as a short point on drafting, in proposed paragraph 286.1(1)(b) I notice that it talks of “human” sperm. Seeing that the word “human” is not put in front of ovum, zygote, or embryo, by the normal rules of statutory interpretation one would assume that they were not the human ones, and I'm sure they're meant to be. I think that's just a drafting issue.

The final point on that is that it might be surprising, especially after this morning's hearing, but I want to agree with Dr. Carter on one big thing. I disagree with you very strongly that proposed paragraph 286.1(1)(a) is vague, but I think proposed paragraph (b) actually would prohibit a lot of research that might not be seen as unacceptable, depending on what you think about doing research on human embryos. I think that even though you've said the human embryo research is something separate, it's actually an essential part of whether you can approve or disapprove of what's written in this bill.

The Chairman: I take those observations to heart. I think that at least the table here and maybe the drafter will be considering an amendment to capture that specific concern about human ovum, etc. But I think from the initial legislation that generated this particular legislation, this would have been—I'm being very subjective—a very deliberate omission simply because the other prohibitions, which I addressed a moment ago, dealt with a series of other manipulations that didn't necessarily involve strictly human ovum and human sperm. You're nodding. You remember. Okay. That's good.

Ms. Miller.

Ms. Fiona Miller: On that point I agree that proposed paragraph 286.1(1)(b) could be interpreted in that way. I do not think its modification is impossible, however. If we really are intending to keep this to a focus on reproducing humans, then we can add a clause about implanting in a woman, or in a person perhaps, to bring to birth. So I don't think it's an insurmountable challenge at this point.

I did, however, primarily want to speak to Dr. Carter's point about pre-implantation diagnosis. I strongly feel that pre-implantation diagnosis is a quite separate issue. I think there are two points being made there. One is that because pre-implantation diagnosis involves very specifically selecting which zygote, which embryo, will continue to life and therefore selecting specific genes, in effect that process of selection is analogous to germ line because you are disallowing.... If everybody who had cystic fibrosis went through pre-implantation diagnosis and if because it's a recessive condition you only allowed statistically one-quarter of those zygotes to continue, i.e., those ones with normal alleles, then theoretically you would remove the cystic fibrosis mutation from the population. Of course there would be remutations happening.

But that is a very different issue from actually manipulating and physically trying to alter the genetic structure. I would put to you that we are not, and we may never be, in possession of the technical capacity to mimic nature so expertly that our efforts to alter the genetic structure to replace or correct the default specifically related to these single gene defects would be accurate enough and safe enough. It's very different from just straight selection. It's a very different issue. I don't know if I'm being clear on that, but it is very different.

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Moreover, the suggestion that we could use pre-implantation diagnosis to in effect switch off the altered gene in the person who has been produced.... Let's say we take a zygote and we genetically engineer it so that this person does not have cystic fibrosis during their lifetime. Then in order to prevent this being passed on to future generations, we quarantine this person to ensure that they never reproduce without pre-implantation diagnosis. That, in theory, would prevent this engineered mutation from being passed on.

It's a completely unrealistic social expectation. It's completely unrealistic. You cannot guarantee that this will not be transmitted. So that's not an effective way of switching off, by any stretch of the imagination. I have never heard anybody suggest that we could switch off engineered mutations produced through germ line at the early blastocyst stage.

The Chairman: Thank you, Ms. Miller.

Dr. Scorsone.

Dr. Suzanne Rozell Scorsone: I was going to raise precisely this question of the pre-implantation selection. It would be such an invasion of that person's rights. Not only would the person have to be quarantined, but they wouldn't be allowed to reproduce normally. You manipulate the embryo, you treat the embryo for the disorder, and the embryo grows, comes to term, grows up into an adult human being and wants to get married like most other people, or wants to have a child by whatever means, but the only way that person is allowed to have a child is by in vitro fertilization and a hugely costly process of selection of the embryos.

So if one is looking at modes of treatment, I would suggest that in terms of the welfare and the human rights of that person, this is not a viable alternative.

The Chairman: Thank you, Dr. Scorsone.

Dr. Carter, you've got the very last word.

Dr. Ronald Carter: I was merely using that as an example. The member was asking me if there were methods of turning off and turning on things that were introduced so that they were not transmitted to future generations.

It is imperfect, and I agree exactly with these comments that there are many aspects of it that are objectionable.

Technically that is one way you could do it. It's definitely not an acceptable way. In future, there may be acceptable ways. That's for the future to tell us.

The Chairman: Okay, Dr. Carter. Thank you very much.

As I said a moment or two ago, this has certainly been a very lively debate. I've found that apart from it being interesting in its own right, it certainly has been informative and a lot more focused, I think, than some of the discussions we had on Bill C-47, in part because this addresses one of the proscriptions, even though there are two articles to it. It has been most valuable for us.

Obviously this will continue next Tuesday when the committee sits again, but it will continue with different people, and you've given us an opportunity to focus that debate as well.

So for that I thank you very much, and I especially thank you for the frankness with which you engaged in interpersonal debate. In committees we don't normally have that opportunity. However, every cloud has its silver lining, despite the fact that there are members from the government side who had very pressing matters today—and I'm sure I speak for them when I say it was not their intention to show disrespect. They will of course be following this with great interest in Hansard. Their absence produced the flexibility that allowed us to have this kind of inter-witness debate. I'm sure Madam Picard will appreciate that as well.

Mrs. Pauline Picard: [Inaudible—Editor].

The Chairman: I don't think we want to take it that far.

On behalf of those who could be here and those who couldn't, let me give you a very sincere and warm thank you for sharing your expertise and your insights. I don't want to make it trite, or to use Madam Picard's words, I don't want to minimize the import, but they've certainly wakened up a lot of our legislative approaches. So thank you very, very much.

As I said a moment ago, I'm sure this is just round one, if the papers are correct.

The meeting for this purpose is adjourned. I'm going to ask members to stay back for a moment or two.