Treating Human Life as a Commodity
By Camilla Gunnarson

When the Canadian government passed the Assisted Human Reproduction Act (Bill C-6) in April 2004, they assured Canadians that checks and balances would be in place and that there would be a review of the legislation in three years time.
           
Pro-lifers warned policy makers and the public that because this legislation started with the assumption that human embryos have no inherent value and are not persons in their own right, it would be only a matter of time that we allow for the creation of human embryos solely for the sake of their stem cells, the creation of "designer babies" and human cloning. 
           
The Act made provisions to establish the Assisted Human Reproduction Agency of Canada to oversee and regulate the activities of fertility clinics and researchers got the green light to experiment on frozen "leftover" embryos no longer needed by couples using in vitro fertilization (IVF). To date, this agency is not up and running.
           
The Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) who recommended the regulations to the federal government regarding this Act assured Canadians that they would continue to foster discussion of the "ethical" principles involving stem cell research and that women’s health would be protected during the process of fertility treatments.  Despite these assurances, and, before the federal agency has even become active, we have learned that the CIHR quietly re-wrote the regulations this past June without telling the public. The new regulations allow researchers not only to experiment on frozen embryos, but “fresh” embryos are fair game as well.  This means that fertility clinics can now ask women before embryos are created if they would be willing to donate embryos for research.  Does this mean that additional embryos are being created for the sake of their stem cells?

Health Risks:
           
Every woman who has undergone IVF knows that it is an invasive and difficult procedure. Complications include a potential link to ovarian cysts and cancers, severe pelvic pain, rupture of the ovaries, stroke and possible negative effects on future fertility and even death. The success rate of a full-term normal pregnancy derived from an IVF treatment is at best 20%. We are concerned that women who are asked to donate their fresh embryos may not realize that they could be diminishing their chance of getting pregnant later on should they want to have another baby in the future.
           
The Ottawa Citizen reported on September 13, 2005 that two leading ethicists are calling for a moratorium on the use of fresh embryo donation in Canada until professional practice guidelines and other national regulations can be developed. Dr. Jeffrey Nisker of the University of Western Ontario said, "There should be a national ethical debate before doctors go taking fresh embryos from women," Dr. Nisker believes that physicians who broach the subject of fresh embryo donation with patients "may unknowingly become complicit in decreasing their patients' chance of pregnancy and increasing their risk of harm."
           
Dr. Francoise Baylis of Dalhousie University agrees, saying women are at risk given the "inadequate" protection now in place. She is also raising questions about the "surreptitious" way the CIHR rewrote the country's research rules without telling the public.
           
Further down the slippery slope, we recently learned that a Vancouver fertility clinic is offering couples using IVF, a pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PDG) test. The Vancouver testing is being completed in Detroit; however, McGill University Reproductive Centre also conducts the testing in Canada. PGD involves allowing newly created embryos to grow to a certain stage, removing one of their cells and examining it for genetic “defect” that might lead to illnesses or imperfections. One or two embryos with no genetic defect are placed in the mother’s womb at five day’s old. The rest of the human embryos are discarded or donated for research. PGD harkens back to the early 20th century eugenics movement that proposed a more “perfect” human race. Today's movement is carried out under the guise of science.
           
Proponents of PGD claim that this test can be used to create siblings to serve as tissue donors for children already born. For this purpose, embryonic children are created and screened to match the cells of sick siblings. The embryos that do not match are destroyed or donated for research. A Health Canada media release stated, “The child born as a result can then be used as a source of compatible tissue, either from umbilical cord blood or bone marrow, for the affected child."  Health Canada is planning on introducing PGD regulations in May 2006.
           
LifeCanada saw the writing on the wall during the debates leading up to Parliament’s passing of Bill C-6 and we are not surprised that the CIHR, Health Canada and the bio-tech industry want to open the door further to exploitation of human life.
           
LifeCanada's application to testify before the Senate Committee in 2004 during debate was rejected. Whether the government will forbid a pro-life voice at the table in 2007 when the legislation is to be reviewed remains to be seen. In the meantime, we will be a voice for those who are being created and killed exclusively for their stem cells, for women who are treated as mere commodities to produce human embryos for experiments, and for those who are being used for utilitarian purposes. 

Camilla Gunnarson is the part-time editor of LifeCanada News.