Stacking The Bioethical Dice Game - White House Uninterested In Diverse Scientific Views

Elizabeth Blackburn

Sunday, March 28, 2004

The phone rang a few days after Sept. 11, 2001. It was Leon Kass, chairman of the brand-new President's Council on
Bioethics, calling to ask: Would I join this White House-appointed federal commission charged with advising the
president on ethical issues arising from advances in biomedical science and technology?

As a cell biologist who had spent years investigating causes of cancer and human aging, I had already begun thinking
about the ramifications of such research. Like many people at that tumultuous time, I also felt eager to do something --
 anything -- to serve a cause larger than myself. I understood that the council would include not just biomedical
scientists but medical doctors, philosophers and legal and policy experts, and Kass assured me it would consider
diverse views and avoid foregone conclusions. I agreed then and there to serve. Little did I guess that a scant 2 1/2
years later a White House phone call would notify me that my services were no longer needed.

In the weeks it took to finalize the appointment, I reflected on my decision. I knew that council discussions were
likely to present challenges; for years Kass, a professor of social thought, had expressed views I believed to be
unfriendly to many aspects of biomedical research and contemporary medicine. But I felt that as a seasoned scientist
whose own work touched on these areas, I could help the council distinguish between real, experimentally validated
science and what amounted to sheer flimflam on issues muddled by competing voices and agendas, and little data.

In January 2002, the entire 18-member council met with President Bush at the White House. His initial directive was for
us to report on the ethics of therapeutic cloning (also known as somatic cell nuclear transfer) and reproductive
cloning. Therapeutic cloning involves making early-stage pre- implantation embryos for use as sources of stem cells --
for research and to be used in cures -- while reproductive cloning refers to the creation of cloned babies by
transferring cloned embryos to a womb for gestation and birth.

I was encouraged when Bush stressed that he wanted to hear the full range of views on those and other questions. 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 prejudged 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 for a four-year moratorium. 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 after 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 in which the director of the administration's Personnel Office said the
White House had decided to "make changes" in the council and that it was adding new people to replace some individual
members, including me.

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, also was 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 is not a scientist, had championed a larger place for religious values in public life. Another
is a political philosopher who has publicly praised Kass' work; the third, a political scientist, had described
research in which embryos are destroyed as "evil."

Why do I find the concept of banning embryonic stem cell research so troubling? Kass has suggested that society should
make decisions based on what he calls the "wisdom of repugnance." I think this is an unreliable kind of wisdom.
Repugnance should serve not as a basis for any decision but rather as a signal for honest, critical examination of what
inspired it. In some instances, repugnance may indeed hint at moral qualms that will withstand the rigors of analytical
questioning. But it may also simply reflect habit or custom.

I am convinced that enlightened societies can make good policy only when that policy is based on the broadest possible
information and on reasoned, open discussion. Narrowness of views on a federal commission is not conducive to the
nation getting the best possible advice. My experience with the debate on embryonic stem cell research, however,
suggests to me that a hardening and narrowing of views is exactly what is happening on the President's Council on
Bioethics.

Elizabeth Blackburn is a professor of biochemistry at UCSF. A version of this article appeared in the Washington Post.

SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle Page E - 3
http://tinyurl.com/yvsjz

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