The committee formed to evaluate and advise on matters relating to the Act, including any proposed research, has unanimously supported the proposed research referred to by Bartels as "attempts to combat male infertility by injecting dysfunctional sperm into ripe eggs" and the Victoria government has responded by introducing an amendment to the Act to enable this research to be done. The governor of the state has also been critical of legislation that seeks to prevent research in this area. Indeed, I believe that the criminal penalties of fines and imprisonment attached to failure to comply with the rather ill-defined and widely interpreted sections of the Act probably have very little support in the general community. It certainly is difficult to equate these penalties for destruction of pre-implantation embryos (for whatever reason or misinterpretation) with the acceptance in Australia of abortion and some methods of contraception.
It isn't unusual in science ...
