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11 Health L. Rev. 3 (2002-2003)

handle is hein.journals/hthlr11 and id is 1 raw text is: Introduction On September 21, 2002, the Health Law Institute and the University of Alberta's Stem Cell Task Force sponsored a Symposium on Bill C-56: The Assisted Human Reproduction Act.' We brought together scholars from across Canada and from a variety of disciplines to analyse various aspects of the Bill.2 Most of the participants wrote and presented short papers that were then critiqued by their workshop colleagues. Comments in hand, the papers were revised and re-submitted. This special edition of the Health Law Review contains these papers.3 Major Themes Though the development of group consensus was not an explicit goal of the meeting, a number of broad themes emerged.4 First, we all agreed that the purpose of and justifications for the legislation need further clarification. Whether one favours the use of statutory prohibitions or, alternatively, flexible regulations, the Government should provide details on: how the adopted regulatory scheme relates to generally accepted Canadian values and views; and why the adopted regulatory approach is required. Admittedly, the Report of the Standing Committee on Health, Assisted Human Reproduction: Building Families, is the only government document that relates directly to this Bill. However, we also drew on the Health Canada documentation that accompanied the 2001 Proposal for Legislation Governing AssistedHuman Reproduction. This is not to say that we all disagreed with every conclusion presented inthese documents. However, as discussed further in the papers that follow, a coherent, comprehensive, and sustainable legislative policy remains absent. To cite just a few examples, though we differed on how best to regulate the area, all agreed that the available formal justifications for the statutory bans on non-reproductive cloning (therapeutic) and the creation of chimeras were inadequate. Indeed, we are unaware of any formal documentation or, even, formal Government statements on the proposed ban on the creations of chimeras. How and why do the use of these technologies infringe human dignity and other core values? Why is a statutory ban needed to achieve the objectives of the legislation? Without further clarification, we all felt that the long term value and practical and just application of the legislation may be in jeopardy (and some of us felt that even its constitutional validity may be in question). Given the significant amount of time and political energy that has already been invested in this area, this is a profoundly disappointing state of affairs. A second theme that emerged throughout the day was concern about the various definitions found in the Bill. Though we understand that legal and scientific definitions often differ, the Government needs to be sensitive to the practical and philosophical implications of selected definitions. For example, the definition of chimera is much narrowerthanthe accepted scientific understanding of chimera. Why was this definition adopted and what is the reason for regulating only a small area of chimeric work? As noted by one workshop participant, the Government needs to decide and communicate what work it wants the definition to do. Moreover, in addition to clarifying the scope and purpose of the definitions created by the legislation, Parliament must also strive to frame them in plain language. This will enable these definitions to be readily understood and interpreted by the legal and scientific communities and by the Canadian public. Volume 11, Number 1 Symposium on Bill C-13: The Assisted Human Reproduction Act 3

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