Something that might have been overlooked with all the other big
news going on last week: President Obama
quietly disbanded the President's Council on Bioethics. This
group, formed after President Bush's 2001 executive order on
embryonic stem cell research, advised the president on policies
regarding stem-cell and other bioethical issues, and drew
criticism from the left for being too restrictionist.
One of the Council's members, Peter Augustine Lawler of Berry
College (no relation to me),
offered some reflections on his dismissal in the Weekly
Standard on Friday. He notes a few barbs at Bush's attitude
toward bioethics -- one of the few areas where Bush actually did
well -- and counters by demonstrating both the Council's diverse
makeup and its quality of discourse. Because of this diversity,
Lawler writes,
I want to emphasize that this [the Council's work] was a
scientific dispute on the moral implications of what the
studies show conducted at the highest level. Socratic dialogue
illuminated the disagreement and allowed those involved to
remain friends in common pursuit of the truth, but no expert
consensus emerged. No Council member was ideological in the
sense of having anything but the highest respect for and full
openness to what we can learn from science. And if expert means
being a genuine scientific authority, they were all clearly
among our nation's most formidable experts.
When even experts disagree, people are stuck with thinking for
themselves. And there's a moral basis for compromise.
Lawler fears that Obama plans to replace the Council with a group
of "experts" who will have neither the expertise of the outgoing
Council nor their intellectual honesty.
The experts, we have to remember, very often hide their own
personal opinions and ideological agendas behind their
impersonal claims to merely be following what the studies say.
We can learn from them, but as long as they fall short of
perfect objectivity based on perfect wisdom, we shouldn't trust
them. These days, the people, above all, should distrust
meddlesome, schoolmarmish judges and bureaucrats (and
presidents who enable them) who want to deprive them of the
capacity of thinking for themselves.
Indeed, reading between the lines of the NY Times
report
on Obama's decision to dismantle the Council, it seems as though,
sadly, he intends to replace it with a PR organ and nothing more.
The council was disbanded because it was designed by the Bush
administration to be "a philosophically leaning advisory group"
that favored discussion over developing a shared consensus,
said Reid Cherlin, a White House press officer.
President Obama will appoint a new bioethics commission, one
with a new mandate and that "offers practical policy options,"
Mr. Cherlin said.
So the President believes that problems in bioethics require no
philosophical consideration, but instead quick and practically
developed shared consensus? Obviously the only way to arrive at a
shared consensus on these tricky issues is to make sure
beforehand that everyone there is ready to tell you what you need
to hear to pass the laws that are politically expedient. The
article ends:
Dr. Alta Charo, an ethicist at the University of Wisconsin,
said that much of the Bush council's work "seemed more like a
public debating society" and that a new commission should focus
on helping the government form ethically defensible policy.
A commission of this kind, Dr. Charo said, "lets the president
react judiciously to rapid and often startling changes in the
scientific landscape."
I.e., instead of considering very weighty problems with the
serious thought they deserve, the commission should quickly turn
around recommendations that allow the president to continue
judiciously advancing his agenda.
