Bush League Science
Missing the scientific votes, President Bush, to make the ban on stem-cell research go your way? Just fire the opposition! Unfortunately, that won't be enough to silence the opposition. Cell biologist Elizabeth H. Blackburn, formerly a member of the President's Council on Bioethics tells all:
When I read the council's first discussion documents, my heart sank. The language was not what I was used to seeing in scientific discourse -- it seemed to me to present pre-judged views and to use rhetoric to make points. Still, the debates we had in the ensuing months proved far-ranging, and all comments were politely received. And, despite the betting of outsiders, 10 of the council's 17 members (one had retired) initially voted against recommending a ban on therapeutic cloning. A late change to the question being voted on turned the minority who were in favor of a ban into a majority of 10 favoring a four-year moratorium, an option the council had not discussed in meetings. But the report issued in July 2002 contained a breadth of views. It also contained a series of personal statements by council members, many of them dissenting from the report's official recommendations.In the year and a half following that report, I began to sense much less tolerance from the chairman for dissenting views. I will focus only on embryonic stem cell research.
Work with animal models had been indicating the potential benefits of such research for more than two decades. More recently, breakthrough research had suggested for the first time that those avenues of investigation would be possible in humans, with revolutionary implications for health care. Yet at council meetings, I consistently sensed resistance to presenting human embryonic stem cell research in a way that would acknowledge the scientific, experimentally verified realities. The capabilities of embryonic versus adult stem cells, and their relative promise for medicine, were obfuscated. Although I was not able to attend every meeting, I engaged fully in preparations for the report: I read and assessed the published science, attended presentations on new research at national and international scientific conferences, and consulted with cell biologists, including stem cell biologists, across the country. The information I submitted was not reflected in the report drafts.
Clearly, the council's reports concerned politically charged topics. I knew that my views on cloning and stem cell research did not match those of either Kass or Bush, as I understood them: In his public statements, the president had supported banning therapeutic as well as reproductive cloning. Still, I was not prepared for the phone call I received at home from the White House on Wednesday, Feb. 25. The caller requested that on Friday afternoon I call the White House Personnel Office. No hint was given as to the reason. When I called, the director said that the White House had decided to "make changes" in the council and that it was adding new people to replace some individual members. I asked him whether this meant that my term on the council had terminated, and the reply was yes.
And what "changes" they were. I was one of just three full-time biomedical scientists on the council. William May, a deeply thoughtful, erudite theologian and medical ethicist, was also leaving. He, too, had often differed with Kass on issues such as the moral worth of biomedical research and the ramifications of trying to legislate such research. And he, too, had voted against both a ban and a moratorium on therapeutic cloning.
When I read the published views of the three new members (bringing the council up to its original total of 18 members), it seemed to me they represented a loss of balance in the council, both professionally and philosophically. None was a biomedical scientist, and the views of all three were much closer to the views espoused by Kass than mine or May's were. One, a surgeon who was not a scientist, had championed a larger place for religious values in public life. Another was a political philosopher who had publicly praised Kass's work; the third, a political scientist, had described research in which embryos are destroyed as "evil."
Just "science" as usual in Bush-land!
(via Reason's blog)