-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen Nachtsheim <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2004 07:31:33
To:"Net [EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: More on Science versus Bush from the Washington
Post-http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13606-2004Feb27.html?referrer=email
washingtonpost.com > -->>
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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