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March 2, 2004

Government Bioethics: Hold the Bio, Hold the Ethics

America is losing its credibility and its technological edge as the current administration continues to favor politics over science.

Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, a noted researcher from the University of California, San Francisco, is a little steamed. And you should be too, if you like your science served straight up, without political bias.

Who hasn't wanted to alter the laws of physics to say, decrease gravity for a game of tennis, or to reduce friction when dealing with a tangled fishing line? Most of us grudgingly learn to live within nature's confines, but then most of us aren't politicians. Making science subject to your own whims might seem a stretch, but politicians have never been known for an excess of humility. Science deals with nature by employing relentless objectivity. Liars are always outed, sometimes within days. Politics, on the other hand, is famously flexible with the truth. Which group do you want to put in charge of your research?

This is hardly the first time politicians have attempted to "fix" nature. The illustrative (and somewhat apocryphal) story is that at the end of the 1800s, Indiana attempted to round off pi to three. They were ridiculed, and rightfully so: a circle won't close if pi is rounded off. Manhole covers would fall in, umbrellas would let in the rain and pizzas would be served up with a slice missing. The final straw probably came when the legislators realized their share of the tax pie might be smaller. Pi was quickly allowed to become an irrational number again.

After the Scopes trials of the 1920s, it seemed that the government had sensibly decided to recuse itself when it came to adjudicating the laws of nature. But the 21st century has seen relapses, with both Kansas and Georgia refusing to teach or accept evolution. However, evolution - like gravity and pi - simply can't be repealed. These are not laws of man, but of nature.

And that brings us back to Dr. Blackburn. Last week she and the esteemed Dr. William May (a thoughtful bioethicist from Southern Methodist University) were terminated as members of the President's Council on Bioethics, headed by Dr. Leon Kass. After picking replacements, Kass was quoted as saying "Our new members are all people of distinction, ethical seriousness and intellectual independence." If that was a slap at Dr. Blackburn, he is mistaken in his target; her resume reveals an extraordinary research career. Her knowledge and skills are directly relevant to the hottest topics in bioethics today. She was the only cell biologist on the committee, and thus brought an invaluable point of view to such subjects as stem-cell research.

Drs. Blackburn and May, however, sometimes found themselves at odds with Dr. Kass. Kass is famous for positing that longevity diminishes our humanity, and that we are probably living too long already. This argument usually plays best to a young and healthy audience. People who are old or sick, on the other hand, often disagree with his philosophy. Drs. Blackburn and May, as representatives of these other citizens, have often spoken up for an alternative point of view, namely that diseases should be cured, and that suffering - despite all the spine-stiffening it may engender - should be alleviated.

In order to preserve harmony and unity on the council, these voices of dissension were let go. Their replacements include a professor of political science and a well-known abortion opponent.

This decision is all the more extraordinary for coming directly on the heels of a devastatingly critical letter from the Union of Concerned Scientists, including twenty Nobel laureates, begging President Bush to quit distorting the science behind its environmental, health and research policies. But scientists are not held in particularly high regard by this administration. Gauging (perhaps correctly) that the public is not too enamored of science in the first place, the current administration is openly pandering to the religious right, insisting that no federal funds will go to creating new lines of stem cells and encouraging Senator Brownback in his attempts to make stem-cell research illegal, punishable by a ten million dollar fine and ten years in jail.

Grad students are listening, and many are deciding not to pursue these exciting new fields of biology, which might land them in jail. They are either switching majors or switching to countries that are not opposed to cutting-edge research. On the other hand, students in other countries are sniffing the opportunities being spurned by America and are rushing into the vacuum. This has the de facto effect of handing off scientific leadership to foreign countries, which are happy to reap the rewards. Worst of all, it grants veto power over the remnants of American research to the most fundamentalist religions in the country.

For two centuries, the world has looked on in envy as American ingenuity leveraged one discovery off another in a cascade of inventions. Our freedom to pursue science has lead to the greatest expansion of health and longevity in the history of mankind. But in today's America - the one that President Bush has so cynically tapped into - science is no longer honored, but instead is relentlessly accused of steering the world down slippery slopes with Frankenstein aspirations. In a sense, scientists really do play god, helping people to live longer and better than ever. That, in fact, is what they think their job is all about.

Dr. Blackburn is sensing a rising tide of anger, from the east coast to the west, as scientists start to realize how far back this administration has set science. America once set the standard for innovative research and gloried in the health of its citizens. Today we watch other countries regularly trump our researchers while the head of the government's bioethics committee worries that we are living too long.

The President's Council on Bioethics is an advisory panel whose recommendations are heeded by lawmakers and whose progress is tracked by opinion makers. The danger is that, with the loss of the biologists and the thoughtful skeptics on the committee, research will no longer be driven by science, but rather by politics. And that would be a shame, because no matter how much they try, even the most glib politician can't repeal the laws of nature.

 


Copyright © 2000-2004 by Scott Anderson
For reprint rights, email the author: Scott_Anderson@ScienceForPeople.com

Here are some other suggested readings on bioethics: