President Bush's bioethics panel has little influence
Before Sept. 11, 2001, the politics of stem cell research so consumed the first summer of the Bush presidency that it was the subject of his first prime-time national address. The president set forth restrictions on government funding of the science. And, as millions watched, he announced the creation of a unique White House panel to examine the complex biomedical issues roiling society.
Bush explained that the new President's Council on
But the council, three years later, has become an afterthought -- with little impact on public debate and virtually no discernable influence on Congress or its creator, President George W. Bush.
The presidential order establishing the council gave the panel two major mandates: To help guide the president in biomedical policy-making and to provide a national forum for discussing these issues. In three years, Bush asked for guidance on a single issue, embryo cloning, then formulated his policy against it months before the council had an opportunity to weigh in. Otherwise, Bush had virtually no interaction with the council, leaving it to explore a set of intriguing issues that lacked clear policy implications.
The council's work led to no federal legislation, a point acknowledged by its chairman, bioethics scholar Dr. Leon R. Kass.
The council has sent out about 13,000 copies of its reports over three years, according to council figures, generating minimal news coverage and no public comment from Bush. The council held 17 public meetings, inviting a broad spectrum of scholars to discuss topics ranging from the practical aspects of stem cell policy to philosophical views of human nature.
Reviewing the last three years in an interview this month, Kass said terrorism and foreign policy dominated the president's agenda, leaving him little time or energy for bioethics.
''Bioethics has not been terribly high on the radar screen of the administration since Sept. 11, and no one can blame them," he said. ''They have by and large left us to set our own agenda."
White House spokesman Trent Duffy said the president appreciated the council's work. ''The council is a reflection of the wonderful things science can do and the need to pause while we think about what science can do," Duffy said. ''The president does feel, as he did with the stem cell issue, that there needs to be long deliberation over bioethical issues."
Scientists and ethicists held high hopes for the council when it was first created. But three years later, many have concluded, given the council's meager influence, that it served primarily to give an ideologically rigid president the veneer of open-mindedness.
''I don't see them as having accomplished much. They issued some reports, most of which turned out to be post facto justifications for the president on stem cells and cloning," said University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur L. Caplan. ''They haven't had anything to say about Americans lacking health insurance, research in the Third World, drug pricing. They've been off solely in esoterica."
Though these topics, heavily debated during the course of Bush's first term, fall under the council's broad mandate, Kass said he selected issues with broader future ramifactions, such as the implications of a rise in use of medicines and surgeries for human improvement rather than to cure afflictions. ''We haven't been engaged in idle academic discussion."
Kass, a charismatic and conservative-leaning University of Chicago ethicist, insisted that much of the animosity toward the council from scientists was sour grapes and politically motivated, calling the scientific community ''largely left of center."
''I think the president appears to be a religious man. . . . Most scientists hold a kind of Enlightenment view that religion is superstition and any man who's seriously religious is by definition a fool."
The council, with offices two blocks from the White House, is budgeted to spend $3 million by the end of this fiscal year.
To help gauge the council's involvement in White House policy-making, the Globe filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all communications between the council and the White House. The council provided 10 documents -- transcripts of the president's nationally televised Aug. 9, 2001, stem cell speech and of a January 2002 meeting between the president and the council; the executive order creating the council and a White House press release on the appointment of council members; a letter from Kass to Bush praising his 2004 State of the Union address; and introductory letters signed by Kass for each of the council's five reports. The president never responded to these letters, according to the communications.
The only explicit task given the council by Bush was to analyze the issue of cloning, the technique in which scientists create embryos genetically identical to a human cell donor. Scientists want to use the procedure in research and to help develop medical treatments, destroying week-old cloned embryos to harvest stem cells that in theory can become any cell in the body. But some rogue groups have said they want to grow cloned embryos into humans -- which most scientists find repulsive. Many conservatives and abortion opponents object to cloning for any purpose.
On July 10, 2002, the council published ''Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry," which called for a ban on the use of cloning to create babies. The panel split on using the technique for medical purposes, with seven members supporting this use and 10 members voting for a four-year moratorium. One member abstained.
But Bush already had decided months earlier to oppose cloning in all instances, saying the embryo destruction required was immoral. He had urged the passage of an outright ban in Congress; that legislation remains stuck in the Senate.
In January 2002, just after a UFO-worshipping cult launched a cloning hoax, Bush summoned his newly appointed bioethics council to the White House to request it study the issue and report back.
''Sitting at the table with his little script cards, he was saying reasonable things, like that he wanted to hear both points of view" on cloning for medical purposes, recalled council member Elizabeth Blackburn, a University of California at San Francisco cell biologist, whose tenure on the council was not renewed this year by the White House.
''But, later," she said, ''after he put the cards away, he said, 'I think it's all morally wrong.' He had already made up his mind, that was clear."
Kass said the council's goal regarding cloning was not necessarily to influence legislation: ''I understood our task to be the full exploration of all aspects of this issue -- scientific, terminological, ethical."
On the other major bioethical issue of his presidency, stem cells, Bush's policy was set before the council was created.
Harvard political philosopher Michael J. Sandel, a council member, said its discussions were personally enriching and fascinating, but, he said, ''I don't know that we have had very much influence on either the president or the Congress."
In addition to reports from the council on stem cells and cloning, Kass oversaw the publication of texts on the in-vitro fertilization industry and the potential misuse of steroids and psychiatric drugs, as well as an anthology of fiction, essays and poetry on bioethics. The reports received little public attention, though Kass said their influence would take root in the future. ''Anyone teaching courses in bioethics would be well served to let their students read these things."
''From now on," Kass said, ''my intention would be to do things that have a public policy payoff."
Raja Mishra can be reached at rmishra@globe.com.
