REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES

May 10, 2002

    Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg--Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, the government's legislation on assisted human reproduction acts to prohibit certain practices which are deemed to be unacceptable, such as commercial surrogate motherhood, paying sperm donors or the buying and selling of human eggs.

    What is curious is why this well-grounded insight into the moral dangers of such commercialization of life itself does not extend in the Liberal government's moral imagination to the patenting, commercializing and marketing of DNA and DNA therapies for the exclusive profit of certain corporations.

    Why is there one law for individuals and another for the corporate sector? If we demand of individuals that they not profit from trading in life forms, and rightly so, then perhaps the government should summon the courage to discipline the morality of the corporate sector with the same vigour that it now applies to individual Canadians.