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Passing on the Right: Conservative Bioethics is Closer Than it Appears

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

R. Alta Charo
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Extract

In August 2001,just after President Bush announced his stem cell funding policy and the creation of a new Presidents Council on Bioethics PCB), the new chair of the PCB, Leon Kass, set out his philosophy for constructing public bioethics bodies: There are several ways of running commissions, he said. One is to stack it with your people, make them homogenous, and force a consensus. Another is to make them heterogeneous, so that you can only come to the lowest common denominator. We re not going to adopt either . We are going to allow the debate to be developed and heard.

Now, three years, sixteen meetings, and five reports later, there are nagging questions about whether this council indeed has allowed the debate to be developed and heard. And the charge of politicizing public bioethics to a degree heretofore unknown and stifling the voices of dissenting members comes not from the political left but from President Bushs own appointees, including one scientist who was dismissed from further service.

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Article
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , Summer 2004 , pp. 307 - 314
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2004

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