Originally published October 4 2005
Critics hope Bioethics Council will adopt a practical stance
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
As Leon Kass prepares to leave his position as leader of the President's Council on Bioethics, critics of the council hope the group will turn from its concern with abstract matter to address more pressing concerns like the state of American healthcare.
In pondering technologies not expected to bear fruit for years, the council, led by American Enterprise Institute fellow Leon Kass, has defined its mission as being a search for a "richer" bioethics, concerned with preserving human dignity amid the advance of biotechnology.
As Kass prepares to step down from his leadership role on Saturday, critics say it is time for council members to take their heads out of the clouds and tackle real problems, such as deficiencies in the health care and insurance systems.
How this disagreement in principle is resolved may define President Bush's science legacy, says Art Caplan, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania.
Three of the council's six reports have dealt with stem cells and cloning, a related controversy.
The council called for prohibiting research on embryos older than 10 to 14 days, and seeking greater oversight and study of reproductive medicine.
Critics say that it's fine to debate ethics, but even when the topic is as high-profile as stem cell research, it's more important to consider issues that are affecting Americans today.
The nuts-and-bolts issues of patient rights are a cornerstone of bioethics in medical practice, says bioethicist Jonathan Moreno of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, and past president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities.
They looked at issues that included medical-experiment ethics, determining brain death and doctor-patient relationships.
For example, the Carter council proposed guidelines for human medical experiments.
In a written summary of his views presented at the council's recent meeting, Kass suggested that politics is behind the criticism.
A highly respected pioneer in the bioethics field, Pellegrino, 85, takes his views more from his background in Roman Catholicism than from classical philosophy, says Georgetown University bioethicist Tom Beauchamp, who served on a bioethics council under President Nixon.
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