The President's Council on Bioethics (PCB) is an advisory group that canvases expert opinion on technical issues in biomedical ethics and issues recommendations that objective in that they are based on a neutral and broadly reliable method for gathering and assessing ideas and information.
...or are they just a bunch of partisan hacks?
The Washington Post reports that Leon Kass, the chair of the commission, is leading an unnamed group of strategists in divising the President's congressional agenda on bioethics, especially cloning. Apparantly, Kass has decided to ignore the deliberations of the committee, since he knows what is right anyway, and skip right to figuring out how to sell the right answer to Congress. (via bioethics.net).
Meanwhile, Bioethics.net is also reporting (here, here and here) on an idea by PCB member William Hurlbut for gathering embryonic stem cells that is supposed to circumvent ethical objections. Apparantly, if you turn off certain genes for making the placenta, the embryo no longer counts as an embryo, and you can destroy it.
Bioethics.net complains that no argument has been made for this moral transformation, and that the idea isn't really Hurlbut's anyway. They also say it won't work, but don't provide links to the technical details.
What is more fascinating to me, though, is Hurlbut's resume. Bioethics.net points out that he calls himself a Stanford biologist when really he simply teaches a few bioethics courses for them. Also, look at his publications. They are almost all in partisan conservative journals like The New Atlantis or are conference proceedings for events he hosted.
Hey, I'm an adjuct professor of bioethics too. Can I have a job on the President's Committee?
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