November 5, 2003

News

e the other press ©

 

Stepping
Up the
Stem Cell
Debate

Ted Morrison
OP Contributor

In a 149-109 victory for the Federal
Government, the House of Commons last
week voted in favour of a bill approving the
regulation of reproductive technologies,
including surrogate motherhood and fertility
treatments. But the most contentious issue in
the bill is stem cell research.

Both supporters and opponents have
focused almost exclusively on what they
believe the legislation does about stem cells.
Proponents of the bill say that it will bring
badly needed order to a thus-far unregulated
area of science.

“It is time to act,” the bill’s sponsor, Health

Minister Anne McLellan, told reporters
before the vote. “There is a legislative and
regulatory void.”
The major sticking point for some of the
opposition to the bill is the perception that it
may not go far enough. Paul Szabo, the
leader of the 16 Liberals opposing the legisla-
tion, said: “This bill is fatally flawed, there’s
no question about it.”

Szabo has successfully helped to delay the
legislation until now, arguing, among other
things, that the current version doesn’t fully
ban human cloning or animal-human
hybrids.

“Tt is a fact that research is going on using
embryos in this country and has been explic-
itly permitted since 1987,” said Francoise
Baylis, an ethicist at Dalhousie University.

Embryonic stem cells are seen as having
incredible potential in the treatment of dis-
eases. The cells can be stimulated to become
any of the three hundred types of human cell,
giving hope to patients with spinal condi-
tions, brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s, and
cystic fibrosis, among others. Scientists may
one day be able to custom-grow healthy
organs for transplant—eliminating the risks
and harrowing life-long drug regimens asso-
ciated with tissue rejection syndrome.

But many people oppose the research
because stem cells have to be harvested from
dead human embryos. The debate in
Canada has been widely perceived as a stand-
in for the abortion issue. The major con-
tention backed by many religious groups, is
that life is sacred, life begins at conception,
and that a four-cell embryo is therefore a
human being.

Supporters of the new laws point out that
any fertility clinic produces many non-viable
embryos for every successful one, and that
.surplus embryos are simply thrown out after
they can no longer be stored. Those who
favour extending the field of research point
out that it isn't logical to oppose stem cell

 

research while supporting the same repro-
ductive technology that actually creates the
embryo in the first place.

Yet in the United States, science has been
hamstrung by restrictive rules limiting
research to only 60 already-discovered “lines”
of stem cells out of a far greater potential
number. This stems (ahem) from the rather
mixed-up views of President George W.
Bush, an avowed Christian and abortion
opponent who as Governor of Texas super-
vised 112 executions.

John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia,
said that he holds conservative views and is
opposed to abortion. But he recently signed
into law a bill permitting the use of embry-
onic stem cells in science: “The central ethi-
cal issue here is that I have been personally
unable to find a huge moral distinction
between allowing the human embryo to suc-
cumb as a result of its exposure to room tem-
perature, and ending it through research,” he
said.

The creation of embryos and the use of
surplus fertility clinic embryos for research
are permitted in both Britain and the US.
However, the current US law prohibits the
use of federal funding, acting as an effective
ban on expanding fields of exploration. The
Canadian bill allows surplus embryos to be
used, but bans their creation for experiments.

Until recently, the Federal Government
might not have been able to pass this bill
because the issues were so touchy. However,
with Jean Chretien retiring in a few months,
the Government assuaged the fears of NDP
MP’s, gaining the majority they needed to
pass the bill in the House.

Ron Worton, president of research at the
Ottawa Hospital told the Montreal Gazette
that if Parliament didn’t pass the bill, they
could, without meaning to, clear the way for
unregulated and unethical research “like
cloning human beings, for example’—a
practice to which most scientists in the field
currently stand opposed.

Liberal Tom Wappel, an ardent anti-abor-
tion supporter, on the other hand, felt that
unethical practices were exactly what the bill
was about: “It strikes me as utterly macabre
to be talking about legislating permission to
experiment on humans. Ultimately, that is
exactly what we are talking about.”

The fight to regulate reproductive technol-
ogy isn’t over yet. The bill must still pass in
the Senate, and if it is still in debate by the
time Paul Martin comes to power, the bill
will die, and experimentation on embryos
will continue unregulated.

 

York Professor a

‘cannabis crusader
Young wants feds to improve MMRA

 

Angie Oliveira
Excalibur

TORONTO (CUP)—A law
professor at York University is
calling on the federal govern-
ment to make marijuana more
accessible for medical purposes.
Alan Young is representing a
small handful of patients and
has been advocating for easier
access to marijuana for medical
reasons since 1998.

In January of this year he chal-
lenged the Medical Marijuana
Access Regulations (MMRA),
claiming they were constitution-
ally flawed and made no lawful
source of marijuana available to
people who require the drug for
medical purposes.

The MMRA was established
in 2000 by the federal govern-
ment as a framework to regulate
the use of marijuana for people
who are suffering from serious
illnesses.

Based on the January hearing,
the Ontario Supreme Court
ordered the federal government
to provide a legal source and
supply of marijuana for medical

purposes, giving them | six
months to do so.
According to Young, six

months passed and nothing
changed, so Young’s clients filed
a civil lawsuit in May against
Health Canada. On October 7,
the courts made the decision to
remove four of the MMRA’s
restrictions, making the regula-
tions constitutional. This deci-
sion also made the possession of
small amounts of pot illegal
again.

Though the ruling now makes
the MMRA constitutional,
Young argues that it is not
improving accessibility because
medicinal marijuana is still diffi-
cult and expensive to acquire,
forcing sick people to buy it on
the black market. He cites that
some of the people he represents
spend tens of thousands of dol-
lars a year on marijuana.

“This decision...gives us a lot
of ammunition to fight with

http://www.otherpress.ca_

government over, in terms of
improving the MMRA,” said
Young. He explains that with
this ruling, his next step is to
bring in corporate involvement
to find cheaper marijuana and
gain access to a greater variety of
strains.

“We have had modest success

with no resources. So now I
want to see what we can achieve
when the corporate world gets
behind us to sponsor what |
consider to be this important
activity,” said Young, who adds
that although he does not like
the corporate world, “the bot-
tom line is corporations build
hospitals.”
Young said over the past three
months he has been approached
by the private sector, and has
plans to establish a warehouse to
grow thousands of pot plants.
“The reality is, if someone
comes to me and says you know
what, we want to help and we
can offer resources, I made an
agreement that says I will only
assist you if you promise me to
offer the product at a certain low
price,” said Young.

With this month’s court rul-
ing, some York students support
use of marijuana for medical
purposes. “I think it should be
available for medical reasons,”
said human resources student
Nelia Cabral. “I think that they
should focus more on the drug
traffickers, not so much marijua-
na but other more hardcore

drugs.”
First year communications
major Kevin Yoo agrees,

“Medical marijuana should be
legalized because other sub-
stances that are more harmful to
the body, like tobacco and alco-
hol, are perfectly legal,” said
Yoo. “You should either legalize
both of them or ban both of
them, and since Canada is very
liberal, they should legalize both

of them.”

Page 5