Overview of International Human Embryonic Stem Cell Laws

Appendix E
Subscriber Only
Sign in or Subscribe Now for audio version

Countries around the world have responded to the ethical problems raised by embryonic stem cell research in a number of ways. Some governments have passed laws prohibiting all research on human embryos, while others have explicitly endorsed and funded ES cell research. Many countries, like the United States, regulate the research through restrictions on government funding, while others license researchers to ensure compliance with the national policy. Here we describe the stem cell policies of several countries and international bodies, both to offer some perspective on the American policy and to indicate some of the policy options that other nations have pursued.

Australia. The laws in Australia relating to human embryonic stem cell research have undergone significant changes over the past decade. In 2002, the Australian Parliament passed the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction Act, which banned all kinds of human cloning, regardless of the purpose, and also banned all in vitro conception for purposes other than “achiev[ing] pregnancy in a particular woman.”[1] Parliament also passed the Research Involving Human Embryos Act, which allowed for research on “excess ART embryos” if licensed by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).

The cloning ban was loosened with the passage in 2006 of the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Act.[2] The act retained the ban on so-called reproductive cloning, but it allowed SCNT for research purposes, so long as the cloned embryo did not grow beyond fourteen days.[3] Such research is permitted pursuant to the issuance of licenses by the NHMRC.[4] Human-animal hybrid embryos are permitted under the same licensing and similar growth restrictions, while the creation of chimeric embryos is altogether prohibited. (A “hybrid,” in Australian law, is an embryo created by combining gametes or genetic material from two different species. A chimeric embryo is “a human embryo into which a cell, or any component part of a cell, of an animal has been introduced.”)

Canada. Canadian regulations on human ES cell research are contained in the Updated Guidelines for Human Pluripotent Stem Cell Research,[5] which went into effect in June 2010 and which supersede earlier Guidelines from 2007. The new Guidelines apply to any research involving human pluripotent stem cells that is funded by any of the country’s three central science-funding agencies — the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. The Guidelines apply both to the derivation of ES cells from embryos, and to research carried out on established ES cell lines. Also in place is the 2004 Act Respecting Assisted Human Reproduction and Related Research, which was intended to regulate the derivation of ES cells from embryos, though it does not affect pre-existing human ES cell lines.

Subscribe today for as low as $24/year

Subscribers receive new issues weeks to months before articles are posted online.

SIGN IN TO ACCESS
The Witherspoon Council on Ethics and the Integrity of Science, “Appendix E: Overview of International Human Embryonic Stem Cell Laws,” The New Atlantis, Number 34, Winter 2012, pp. 129-146.