Senator O'CHEE (6:47 PM) —I do not want to take too long to address this subject, but I really do think there are a couple of observations that should be made when we talk about experimentation with human genes. The first is that I believe most decent people would support the concept that cloning of human embryos should be banned—that is, quite simply, for fundamental moral reasons. The first of those moral reasons goes to the sanctity of human life, because to clone a human embryo you actually have to destroy another embryo or destroy the genetic contents of the embryo, and therefore there are many people who believe that cloning is in fact a type of killing.

But there is another philosophical reason why cloning of humans poses real problems, and that is, because everybody is genetically unique, people have a concept of self. The concept of self is tied up with the uniqueness of a person. If you allow cloning, you destroy the uniqueness of each human individual and therefore you challenge the very concept of self. Self is tied up with exclusive identity. It poses fundamental philosophical problems if you do that. It flows from that that if you want to use human embryos to grow spare parts there are even more fundamental moral and ethical dilemmas.

I think this is symptomatic of technology which is going too fast for our society to deal with it in ethical terms. We really should take time to pause and ask ourselves why we need some of this technology and whether we should accept the arguments of those who say, `The cloning of humans is inevitable and therefore we may as well do it now.' I do not believe that cloning of humans is inevitable. Just because it is possible does not mean that we should do it. It is possible to detonate a nuclear bomb over a city, but just because it is possible does not mean that it is a good thing to do. I believe that one of the fundamental requirements of government is to make judgments about what is good and what is bad, and I do not see much that is good from cloning human embryos.

It also creates massive problems—which, of course, were raised in the consideration of the committee—about identifying particular genetic types and then using them for a purpose or limiting their potential. One thing I do know about human beings is that, irrespective of what genetic inheritance a person may have, the fundamental limitation on that person is often their will, and you cannot identify will genetically. Will is something which cannot be tied to a particular gene and cannot be tied to a particular piece of DNA. Will is not inheritable. For those who are religious, will is something which is God-given. The reason I say that is that, if we were to go and identify foetuses and say that this foetus is potentially impaired or that this foetus has a potential problem and we decide to terminate those foetuses, we terminate without any appeal the potential that that unborn child has to a life, and maybe a very important life. It is folly for us to believe that, just because we are busy mapping human DNA, we can tell the future. We cannot tell the future. But the argument that science gives us all the answers, which is inherent in the belief that we should use these technologies to decide which foetuses should be born and which foetuses should not be born, is arrogant. For those reasons, I think we should all consider this matter very seriously.

It flows from that that there is another thing that we must examine, which is the whole idea of letting technology run rampant. I believe it is our moral responsibility to form at least a moral framework in which we can examine the application of technology. Too frequently we hear people who create technology saying, `This is good,' because it does something better, faster or more efficiently. But nobody would suggest that the atom bomb is morally good because it kills people faster or more efficiently. I think there is a real difference between the efficiency of a particular type of technology and its moral worth, and the moral worth comes from the application.

For those reasons I believe that it is well worth the time of the Senate to examine this report and also well worth the time of all senators to consider the issues about the interface between ethics and the broader spectrum of technology. If we do not do that, we face the very real prospect that we will unleash on our society technological changes which may not in fact make our lives better; they may make them substantially worse. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.