Canadian Psychiatrists Urged to Voice Views on Cloning, Stem Cell Research

A bill to regulate human stem cell research and ban human cloning was introduced into the Canadian Parliament in May. As things look now, it will become law during the next several months.

This news comes from Timothy Caulfield, an associate professor of law at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and research director of the university’s Health Law Institute. He spoke at the annual meeting of the Canadian Psychiatric Association in November in Banff, Alberta.

If Canadian psychiatrists hold views on human stem cell research and human cloning, they should write their legislators about them, and soon, Caulfield said.

Individual letters from physicians carry considerable weight with legislators, he stressed. “I hope all of you will become engaged in this important debate,” he said.

Caulfield said that he finds parts of the bill reasonable—for instance, it does not ban human stem cell research completely. However, he finds some other aspects of the bill most troubling. For example, he believes that it is based on questionable moral positions and has some quirky provisions—say, it would allow a human embryonic stem cell to be placed in a mouse embryo, but a mouse embryonic stem cell could not to be placed in a human embryo.

He also holds that there are some critical ethical questions surrounding the research that the bill does not address and gave an example: “Because each cell in our bodies could potentially be cloned into a human being, are we walking human embryos?”

But what disturbs Caulfield most about the bill, he implied, is that it would criminalize such research and, once enacted into law, would be difficult to change.

Nonetheless, he does not believe that scientists should be able to engage in such research totally unfettered, but the restrictions should consist of government regulations, not statutory prohibitions, he opined. ▪