The White House yesterday released the names of 17 philosophers, medical experts, lawyers and theologians who will make up the newly created President's Council on Bioethics, a group that will advise the president on matters at the intersection of medicine and morality.
Bush had already tapped University of Chicago ethicist Leon R. Kass in August to chair the council. But the White House did not release the names of the other members until last night, on the eve of the council's inaugural meeting to be held in Washington today and Friday.
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Cloning: The legal and ethical debate.
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At the top of its agenda is the ethics of human cloning and of experimentation on cloned human embryos -- contentious topics that will be the focus of a Senate hearing next Thursday and are due for a full-blown debate by March.
The council will be navigating a scientific and ethical landscape significantly more complex than the one that existed when the House became embroiled in the topic last summer. In November, researchers announced that they had made the first human embryo clones, giving immediacy to warnings by religious conservatives and others that science is no longer serving the nation's moral will. At the same time, the United States was fighting a war to free a faraway nation from the grip of religious conservatives who were denounced for imposing their moral code on others.
Adding to the complexities, some observers say the president's council is politically stacked. Many of the18 members, including Kass, are well-known conservative thinkers. And the executive director, a former aide to House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.), is a self-described Christian "proclaimer" who favors a greater religious presence in the schools and who once smashed a roommate's pornographic videocassette with his bare hands.
Critics note that on the issue of research on cloned embryos, at least, Kass and several others on the panel -- along with Bush -- have already made their opposition quite clear. "The president has pretty well established a position on these issues, and he was unlikely to appoint a panel of experts to tell him those positions are mistaken," said Sean Tipton, a spokesman for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
But Kass has vowed that the council will transcend preconceptions and politics, and will uphold its mission to study the issues thoroughly and provide the president with the best advice it can.
"Washington likes fights and polarization and opposition," he said. "But my habit is to make sure the questions that are neglected will be thought about. It's very important that we think deeply about these matters. The future of humanity hangs in the balance."
Bush announced his intention to create the council on Aug. 9, during a televised speech about embryo cell research. Months went by without an executive order to implement the plan, but after Massachusetts researchers reported in November that they had made the first human embryo clones, the paperwork flew.
The council is the latest of about a half-dozen similar entities created since 1974. Some were great successes -- including the first, whose reports were quickly codified into formal protections for prisoners and children in medical research. By contrast, one ethics board got so tangled up in the abortion debate that its charter expired before the group could agree on its own membership.
The most recent national ethics commission was created by President Bill Clinton in 1995. It issued six major reports on such topics as cloning and embryo cell research before its mandate expired in October. Its work has been praised for its scholarly heft, but none of its recommendations was enacted into law or turned into regulation.
Today's council meeting will focus on human cloning and human embryo research. While virtually no one has come out in favor of making cloned babies, many scientists believe that human embryo clones would be the best source of so-called embryonic stem cells, which show promise for the treatment of various diseases. Researchers and patient advocacy groups have called on Congress to allow such research, which they call "therapeutic cloning," and to ban only "reproductive cloning," in which a cloned embryo is transferred into a woman's womb to grow into a cloned baby.
With explicit support from the Bush administration, however, the House has already passed a bill that would outlaw therapeutic as well as reproductive cloning. Dueling bills in the Senate would either ban all work on cloned embryos or only work leading to the birth of human clones. This week, interest groups on both sides of the issue launched what promise to be massive lobbying campaigns.
Even if the council moves too slowly to influence Congress, its public deliberations are likely to reveal members' views about the moral standing of human embryos -- a central issue that is sure to come up again as scientists continue to make advances in stem cell research, genetic screening and even genetic correction or enhancements of embryos.
Until now, opponents of therapeutic cloning have largely made their case on the grounds that it would be difficult to stop someone from making a cloned baby if it were legal to make cloned embryos. But experts said that if the new panel supports the other major line of reasoning -- that human embryos are inherently deserving of protections -- such support could legitimize an effort to codify fundamentalist views into law.
The council's membership includes several well-known scholars with conservative leanings. Until Bush named him to chair the council, Kass was a leading figure in the Bioethics Project, a think tank chaired by William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, who this week said he would devote most of his political energy to getting the Senate to pass a total ban on cloning. Kass has already made clear that he sees the creation of human embryo clones as a threat to "humanity's humanity."
The group's executive director, Dean Clancy, is a "proclaimer" for the Separation of School and State Alliance, which favors home schooling over compulsory public education in order to "integrate God and education."
Among the other conservative voices on the council are Francis Fukuyama of Johns Hopkins University; James Q. Wilson of the University of California at Los Angeles; Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer (who several months ago called for Kass to be named surgeon general); and Princeton theologian Robert P. George, who has said that, when it comes to such things as the integrity of Christian doctrine, "there is, I'm afraid, an 'us' and a 'them.' "
But a few members carry more liberal credentials -- including Rebecca Dresser of the Washington University School of Law -- and there are high-powered scientists on board, including Janet D. Rowley of the University of Chicago and neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga of Dartmouth.
Experts said every appointee on the list is an intellectual powerhouse -- a fact that some hope would prove more important than the group's political balance.
"Any public policy body making recommendations to the executive or legislative branch is going to have a political character to it," said Eric Meslin, executive director of the Clinton commission and nowdirector of the Indiana University Center for Bioethics. "We should give them a chance to do their work."
Kass pledged to surprise the public with the breadth of opinion and creative approaches he intends to bring to bear -- a promise he has already kept by asking the group to be ready today to discuss "The Birthmark," a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne about the drawbacks of gaining perfect control over nature.
"We are gaining the powers to intervene in the human body and mind in an unprecedented way," Kass said. "The major motive for gaining this power is humanitarian and therapeutic . . . but the very same powers can also be used to produce fundamental changes in human nature, and even when used for good purposes may carry unavoidable consequences, negative consequences, that could challenge human decency, human dignity and respect for our humanity."
Staff writer Amy Goldstein and researcher Margot Williams contributed to this report.
