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Requiem for the President’s Council on Bioethics
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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 Two weeks ago President Obama sent a memo to the members of the
President’s Council on Bioethics (PCB) [1] informing them that their
appointments were being prematurely terminated. Impatient to nominate
his own slate, Obama decided the September 2009 expiry date of their
present term was too long to wait.
An advisory commission such as the PCB serves at the pleasure of the
sitting president. Since the members whom he served notice were all
Bush appointees, Obama’s move was unsurprising. It is however a
further indication of the direction the new administration is taking
public moral discourse.
President George W. Bush established the PCB in November 2001. Its mandate was (1) “to undertake fundamental inquiry into the human and moral significance of developments in biomedical and behavioral science and technology” [2]. In seven and a half years the Council published substantive ethical analyses on topics ranging from the determination of death, cloning, and stem cell research, to care for the elderly, alternative sources for deriving pluripotent stem cells, and the screening of newborns (http://www.bioethics.gov/reports/). It also was charged (2) “to provide a forum for a national discussion of bioethical issues”. Although the worldviews of its members were diverse, in fact fairly equally distributed between progressives and conservatives; because it was unwilling to rubberstamp the current opinions of the scientific community, some professionals complained that it inhibited and not advanced the national discussion. And yet its publications, despite at times their length and complexity, were widely read by professionals in ethics, science and medicine, were widely quoted in journals, and did indeed precipitate wide discussion. (Its White Paper on Alternative Sources of Pluripotent Stem Cells [3] changed the nature of the national discussion on stem cell research.)
Presidential advisory groups in bioethics go back to the 1970s. President Carter appointed the first such commission in 1978 (President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research) [4] to study issues such as brain death, informed consent, genetic testing, and disparities in health care between socio-economic groupings. The Carter commission was carried over by President Regan, who moderately expanded the size of its membership [5]. President Clinton established his own commission in 1995 (National Bioethics Advisory Commission—NBAC) to advise him on issues such as human cloning, research on persons with mental disabilities, and, for the first time, stem cell research. His commission’s mandate was to “identify broad principles to govern the ethical conduct of research” [6]. To his credit, Clinton expressly excluded from the NBAC’s list of duties any responsibility for reviewing or approving research projects [7].
According the New York Times, the Obama administration wants the new PCB to focus less on theoretical questions and to get its hands dirty in practical considerations. The Bush commission, complained White House press officer Reid Cherlin, was a “philosophically leaning advisory group”; the president wants a group that “offers practical policy options” [8]. This pleased liberal bioethicist and lawyer, Alta Charo of the University of Wisconsin, who complained that Bush Council’s work “seemed more like a public debating society”; the new commission she insisted should help the Obama administration form ethical policy; it should equip the president “to react judiciously to rapid and often startling changes in the scientific landscape.” Thomas Murray of the Hastings Center agreed; “gobs of quality-improvement studies,” he insisted, is what our country chiefly needs.
The push to get practical in bioethical discourse is a bad sign. It signals a turn away from urgent questions such as whether human embryos deserve full moral respect or whether “human dignity” means that all persons, even the disabled and dying, possess equal value. It turns discourse from the question of should to the question of how; the question ‘Should we clone human embryos for destructive research purposes?’, becomes “How can we do it most expediently?” The chief virtue of the Bush commission was a willingness and ability to formulate and struggle with ethical questions at the heart cultural identity. Although its consensus positions differed at times from a Catholic view, the commission in general took seriously the kind of people we become as a result of asking the questions. It knew that scientific advancement doesn’t always translate into good moral options.
It appears the new administration doesn’t suffer from doubts regarding the new developments in reproductive and regenerative medicine; the time for doubting is past; the new science is with us and we need to accept it; help the President navigate the tumultuous waters; don’t oppose him. And for heaven’s sake don’t give him philosophy lessons!
Notes:
[1] www.bioethics.gov/about/members.html
[2] www.bioethics.gov/about/executive.html
[3] www.bioethics.gov/reports/white_paper/index.html
[4] www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=32607
[5] www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=42768
[6] www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/t970508c.html
[7] For papers published by former bioethics advisory commissions, see www.bioethics.gov/reports/past_commissions/index.html
[8] www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/us/politics/18ethics.html
(c) Culture of Life Foundation 2009. Reproduction granted with attribution required.
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