LABELLED “NOT TESTED ON HUMAN EMBRYOS”

DO NO HARM – Australians for Ethical Medical Research 2 / 31 George St, Niddrie Vic 3043. Tel: 03 9337 6611 or 0401 928305

MEDIA RELEASE NOVEMBER 10TH 2002, 2PM.

COMMENT: DR DAVID VAN GEND

STEM CELL DEBATE: DOCTORS CALL FOR NEW DRUGS TO BE LABELLED “NOT TESTED ON HUMAN EMBRYOS”

As debate commences in the Senate on the Research into Embryos Bill, a group of doctors, patients and ethicists has asked the Senate and major drug companies to work together to ensure that future drugs derived from destructive research on human embryos are clearly identified, so that doctors and patients who conscientiously object from such research will know which medications to avoid.

In testimony before the recent Senate Committee Enquiry into the Research on Embryos Bill, a medical spokesman for Do No Harm (a national association supporting stem cell science but opposing embryo destruction) described the looming ethical quandary thus: “I have three young boys. I do not want them to face a predicament in some years where they go to their doctor, their GP, and are given medications derived, as they would increasingly be, from research on human embryos. “

In a letter to major drug companies this week the medical committee of Do No Harm asks the pharmaceutical industry to ensure “that any such drugs would be clearly identified in the consumer product information (CPI) and pharmaceutical benefits schedule (PBS) as having involved destructive research on human embryos, and conversely, that ethical drugs will be labelled as ‘not tested on human embryos’, in the same ways as certain ethical cosmetics are identified as ‘not tested on animals’.”

In the letter, the doctors ask the industry to understand the issue of conscience at stake: “As doctors, we would face the troubling predicament of having at our disposal an increasing number of drugs derived, in our view, unethically, and therefore needing to find ethically innocent alternative drugs to prescribe. As members of Do No Harm, our position is that new therapies must be developed without any destruction of human embryos, but ask at the minimum that any therapies of ethically contentious derivation be clearly identified for those patients and doctors who conscientiously object.” Dr David van Gend, a spokesman for Do No Harm, comments: “It is increasingly clear, after the Senate Committee hearings, that the practical reason for getting hold of human embryonic stem cells is for drug testing and development, and that ridiculous talk of cures for Alzheimers and spinal injury is merely a populist smokescreen obscuring Big Biotech’s real agenda.” “In the sober setting of the Senate Enquiry”, Dr van Gend observed, “the unsubstantiated fantasies of the embryo lobby were reduced to admissions that any human trials were, if at all, ‘a long way down the track’ (Dr Christopher Juttner, Executive Director of BresaGen, Hansard 17/9/02, CA39). Other more rigorous scientists, leaders in medical research in this country, rejected even this vague timeframe, arguing that embryo stem cells faced inherent and insurmountable barriers of immune rejection and tumour formation – while adult stem cells have no barriers and are already being used to treat humans successfully – and that the public had been seriously misinformed.”

“The same embryo lobbyists made clear that drug testing is a practical and profitable application of embryonic stem cells”, Dr van Gend said, “with Professor Trounson enthusing to the Senate Committee (24/9/02, Hansard CA141): ‘these cells will be highly useful for screening drugs for both toxicology and effectiveness’. His company, ESCell International, declares on its website under ‘routes to revenue’ that it will use embryonic stem cells for the “sale of differentiated cells (eg cardiac, renal, and hepatic cells, for toxicity testing)”. [see the “Approach” section, “Routes to Revenue” at http://www.escellinternational.com]. See also comments to the Committee by the Executive Director of BresaGen, Dr Christopher Juttner, and by Professor Bernie Tuch, of the Diabetes Transplant Unit, Prince of Wales Hospital, supporting drug research using human embryonic cell lines (17/9/02, Hansard CA 40-41).

“At last, some plain speaking about plausible uses of human embryos, with real commercial application – not the deceptive PR capaign about illusory embryonic cures designed to whip up political support for the Bill”, Dr van Gend said. “The Senate, unlike the House of Representatives before them, should now be able to see that the curing of terrible afflictions using embryo stem cell cures is a convenient and calculated fantasy, while the commercial reality is the feeding of embryonic humans to drug companies. If they understand this, and still vote to create an ongoing supply of human embryos for the drug companies, they will be more culpable that the House of Representatives, whose members were largely still victims to the magical thinking peddled by Dr Trounson, his hoax rat, his journal references that didn’t exist, and his widely distorted science”, Dr van Gend said.

“Faced with a likely loss in the Senate, Do No Harm asks sincerely that, at the very least, those citizens who conscientiously oppose such immoral exploitation of the littlest members of the human family are enabled to keep their distance from the resultant drug products, by the introduction of a system of clear product identification”, Dr van Gend concluded.