President George W Bush has 're-shuffled' the council that advises him on cloning and other issues in biomedical research. At the end of last week, two members were dismissed from the US President's Council on Bioethics and replaced by three new members.
Elizabeth Blackburn, from the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF), and William May, a theologian and medical ethicist from the University of Virginia, are the two council members to have been replaced. Both were known to usually be in the dissenting minority within the Council which, since its inception in 2001, has always been characterised by vast differences of opinion. Last month, the Council failed to reach agreement about stem cells in a 400-page report, 'Monitoring Stem Cell Research', and made no recommendations about how the US should proceed in this area. Instead, the report merely summarised developments in stem cell science, the ethical arguments in relation to embryonic stem cell use and current federal policy.
Elizabeth Blackburn has previously spoken in favour of cloning for medical research purposes, often called 'therapeutic cloning'. Now, it is suggested that the new members have been introduced so that the majority of the Council is opposed to therapeutic cloning, in line with the President himself. The White House, however, said that the reshuffle had taken place because the two-year term served by the members who had been dismissed had come to an end. However, the same is true of all other members of the Council. 'We've decided to go ahead and appoint other individuals with different expertise and experience', a spokeswomen for the White House said.
The new council members are Dr Benjamin Carsons, a neurosurgeon from Johns Hopkins University, Diana Schaub, of Loyola College, Maryland, known to support the conservative views on bioethics held by Dr Leon Kass, the chairman of the council, and Peter Lawler, a political scientist known to oppose abortion. Elizabeth Blackburn and others have criticised the President's decision, accusing him of 'stacking' the council in his favour. Democrat Senator Edward Kennedy said the move showed the Bush administration was not interested in hearing neutral scientific advice, adding 'the American people deserve the right science, not right-wing ideology, on critical issues facing their health'. The move has also been criticised by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who said that 'a scientific panel ought to be chosen on the basis of science and on the basis of reputation, not politics'. He added that he believed the reshuffle was 'the wrong thing to do when a country is searching for its appropriate scientific policy. We deserve to have people whose reputations and abilities are not tarnished and are not focussed by politics or religion'.
Meanwhile, Harvard University in Boston, US, is to open a large, privately-funded stem cell centre in April this year. This will allow research to take place outside of the restrictions placed on the use of embryonic stem cells (ES cells) by President Bush in 2001. The Harvard stem cell centre is expected to be formally announced on 23 April, and will bring together researchers from the university and all its affiliated hospitals, according to a report in the Boston Globe newspaper. The Globe also called the creation of the new centre 'a declaration of independence' from Bush's ES cell policy and said that it 'signals increasing frustration among US scientists'. Harvard is not the first US University to begin privately-funded research in this area - it follows Stanford University, UCSF and the universities of Wisconsin and Minnesota. In California, advocates are backing a $3 billion ballot to get ES cell work financed by the state and the state of New Jersey has also pledged $6.5 million to develop ES cell work at Rutgers University.
Sources and References
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Kerry criticises Bush for bioethics panel
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Stem cell center eyed at Harvard
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Bush Dismisses Two Members of Bioethics Council, Appoints Three New Members
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Bush Ejects Two From Bioethics Council
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