Washington D.C., Jun 23, 2009 / 04:14 am
Last week, it was made public that President Obama will disband the President’s Council on Bioethics, and create a new bioethics commission, whose members he will appoint. The decision has drawn criticism from those who believe it is simply an attempt to replace current Council members with more liberal ones.
Since 1974, presidential bioethics commissions have worked to help develop guidance on issues such as genetic engineering and human cloning. The current Council on Bioethics was appointed by President George W. Bush in November 2001, as the debates surrounding human stem cell research grew. Bush’s Council was initially led by Leon Kass of the University of Chicago and, since 2005, by Edmund Pellegrino of Georgetown University.
But according to Reid Cherlin, a White House press officer, the Council under Bush was “a philosophically leaning advisory group” that favored debate over developing a shared consensus. The new bioethics commission will have a new mandate that “offers practical policy options,” Cherlin told the New York Times.
But Robert George, a professor of the Philosophy of Law and one of the current Council members, is not convinced by Obama’s talk of a more practical Council.