[IP] More on Science versus Bush from the WashingtonPost-http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13606-2004Feb27.html?referrer=email
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From: Stephen Nachtsheim <stephen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2004 07:31:33
To:"Net Dave@Farber." <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: More on Science versus Bush from the Washington
Post-http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13606-2004Feb27.html?referrer=email
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-->> Politics -->> Politics > Bush Administration
Bush Ejects Two From
Bioethics Council
Changes Renew Criticism That the President Puts
Politics Ahead of Science
By Rick Weiss
Wash
Saturday, February 28, 2004; Page A06
President Bush yesterday dismissed two members of his
handpicked Council on Bioethics -- a scientist and a
moral philosopher who had been among the more outspoken
advocates for research on human embryo cells.
In their places he appointed three new members,
including a doctor who has called for more religion in
public life, a political scientist who has spoken out
precisely against the research that the dismissed
members supported, and another who has written about the
immorality of abortion and the "threats of
biotechnology."
The turnover immediately renewed a recent string of
accusations by scientists and others that Bush is
increasingly allowing politics to trump science as he
seeks advice on ethically contentious issues.
Last week, a Washington-based interest group released a
report detailing what it called many examples of the
administration distorting the scientific process to
achieve desired policy answers relating to pollution,
embryo research and other topics. Some in Congress, led
by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), have also been
getting vocal on the topic, as have academics,
scientific organizations and science journal editors.
One of the dismissed members, Elizabeth Blackburn, is a
renowned biologist at the University of California at
San Francisco. She said she received a call yesterday
morning from someone in the White House personnel
office.
"He said the White House had decided to make some
changes on the council. He wanted to express his
gratitude and said I'd no longer be on the council,"
Blackburn said.
She said she had no warning and had not heard from the
council's director, University of Chicago ethicist Leon
Kass. She said she believed she was let go because her
political views do not match those of the president and
of Kass, with whom she has often been at odds at
council meetings.
"I think this is Bush stacking the council with the
compliant," Blackburn said.
The other dismissed member, William May, an emeritus
professor of ethics at Southern Methodist University,
is a highly respected scholar whose views on embryo
research and other topics had also run counter to those
of conservative council members. Efforts to reach him
last night were unsuccessful.
Asked why Blackburn and May had been let go, White
House spokeswoman Erin Healy said the two members'
terms had expired in January, and they were on "holdover
status." Asked whether, in fact, all the council
members' terms had formally expired in January, she said
they had.
Pressed on why Blackburn and May had been singled out
for dismissal, she said: "We've decided to go ahead and
appoint other individuals with different expertise and
experience." She would not elaborate further.
Kass, who has written prolifically about
biotechnology's toll on human dignity and was selected
by Bush to head the council, was traveling yesterday and
could not be reached.
Bush created the council by executive order in 2001 to
"advise the President on bioethical issues that may
emerge as a consequence of advances in biomedical
science and technology." He recently renewed its
commission for another two years.
The group of scholars, scientists, theologians and
others has produced several reports, including ones on
human cloning, stem cell research and the use of
biotechnology to enhance human beings. But the council
has often found it difficult to reach consensus on
issues.
The three new appointees are Benjamin Carson, the
high-profile director of pediatric neurosurgery at
Johns Hopkins University; Diana Schaub, chairman of the
department of political science at Loyola College in
Maryland; and Peter Lawler, a professor of government at
Berry College in Georgia. All are respected members of
their fields. And their writings suggest their tenures
will be less contentious than their predecessors'.
When not performing some of the most difficult
surgeries in the world, Carson is a motivational speaker
who often invokes religion and the Bible and has
lamented that "we live in a nation where we can't talk
about God in public."
Schaub has effusively praised Kass and his work. In a
2002 public forum discussing the council's cloning
report, she talked about research in which embryos are
destroyed as "the evil of the willful destruction of
innocent human life."
In a book review in the conservative Weekly Standard in
late 2002, Lawler warned that if the United States does
not soon "become clear as a nation that abortion is
wrong," then women will eventually be compelled to
abort genetically defective babies.
Michael Gazzaniga, a Dartmouth neuroscientist who sits
on the council, said he was "upset" by Blackburn's
ejection.
"She was one of the basic scientists who understood the
biology of many of the issues we're talking about,"
Gazzaniga said. "It will be a loss for sure."
Research editor Margot Williams contributed to this
report
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