Don't Ignore Gene Project: Kirby
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday September 29, 1993
PERTH: The most important scientific breakthrough this century looked like bypassing Australia because the Federal Government had failed to contribute to funding its research, the president of the NSW Court of Appeal, Justice Michael Kirby, said last night.
A worldwide research effort was in train to map and describe the structure and function of all the estimated 100,000 genes in the human body, but so far Australia had played only a minor role.
Australia would have to begin spending millions of dollars on human gene research, he said.
Justice Kirby, who was speaking on the potential legal and moral problems posed by the use of the research, said that unless Australia acted quickly to get in on the research, it would miss the opportunity to participate in the legal and ethical decisions vital to the future of our species.
The research, known as the Human Genome Project, would have far-reaching implications for medicine, ethics and science.
Justice Kirby said Australia would be shackled to the chariots of other nations unless it took a more active role in the research.
"We won't have the legitimacy in the eyes of the rest of the world to start taking a role in the ethical issues if we don't take a bigger role in the science," he said.
The Human Genome Project was the largest concerted biological project ever attempted and had attracted multi-million-dollar funding from other nations.
Justice Kirby said scientists in the United States, Britain, Canada and Europe hoped to have a complete map of the human gene structure by 2005 and that the work appeared to be on target.
He said scientists were already developing "super pigs", and he predicted it would be possible to genetically modify future generations of human beings.
He argued that few people would see a problem in engineering human genes to wipe out diseases that caused mental retardation or blindness.
"But you could go further along the spectrum ... homosexuality may be implicated by a genetic marker," he said. "Someone might say, 'Well, I want a person who is tall, or is very tall, or is blond, or I want a son who will carry on the family name' ..."
Justice Kirby said history might remember the present generation, or the next, as the one that was able to create "a super species".
"There is an enormous well of ignorance about this in the Australian community." Canada was already spending about $25 million a year on the research, but Australia was spending virtually nothing.
Justice Kirby said he believed that the Federal Attorney-General, Mr Lavarch, should refer the matter to the Law Reform Commission so it could explore the legal framework that might be needed to control the use of human genetic-engineering technology.
© 1993 Sydney Morning Herald
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