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PubMed2005

The President's Council on Bioethics 2002-2004: an overview.

The President's Council on Bioethics, headed by Leon Kass, was created by President George W. Bush to advise the President on issues of ethical import raised by advances in biomedical science. Between 2002 and 2004, members of the Council from diverse disciplines addressed topics such as human cloning, stem cell research, assisted reproduction, and medical interventions intended to enhance human capability or appearance. This article provides background on the Council and reviews its published reports. It also considers key definitions and distinctions, specific recommendations of the Council, and positions articulated by members who contributed to the development of its reports.

Advisory Committees↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Confronting deep moral disagreement: the President's Council on Bioethics, moral status, and human embryos.

The report of the President's Council on Bioethics, Human Cloning and Human Dignity, addresses the central ethical, political, and policy issue in human embryonic stem cell research: the moral status of extracorporeal human embryos. The Council members were in sharp disagreement on this issue and essentially failed to adequately engage and respectfully acknowledge each others' deepest moral concerns, despite their stated commitment to do so. This essay provides a detailed critique of the two extreme views on the Council (i.e., embryos have full moral status or they have none at all) and then gives theoretical grounding for our judgment about the intermediate moral status of embryos. It also supplies an account of how to address profound moral disagreements in the public arena, especially by way of constructing a middle ground that deliberately pays sincere respect to the views of those with whom it has deep disagreements.

Advisory Committees↗
PubMed2005

The Baroness's Comittee and the President's Council: ambition and alienation in public bioethics.

The President's Council on Bioethics has tried to make a distinctive contribution to the methodology of such public bodies in developing what it has styled a "richer bioethics." The Council's procedure contrasts with more modest methods of public bioethical deliberation employed by the United Kingdom's Warnock Committee. The practices of both bodies are held up against the backdrop of concerns about moral and political alienation, prompted by the limitations of moral reasoning and by moral dissent from state policy under even the most democratic of governments. Although the President's Council's rhetoric is often scrupulously conciliatory, recurring features of its argumentative practice are regrettably divisive. They order these things better in Britain.

Advisory Committees↗
PubMed2006

Cosmetic psychopharmacology and the President's Council on Bioethics.

Advances in neuroscience and biotechnology have heightened the urgency of the debate over "cosmetic psychopharmacology," the use of drugs to enhance mood and temperament in the absence of illness. Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness (2003), the report of the President's Council on Bioethics, has criticized the use of cosmetic psychopharmacology. The Council claimed that cosmetic psychopharmacology will necessarily lead to "severing the link between feelings of happiness and our actions and experiences in the world," but it provided no satisfactory arguments to support this claim and ignored the possibility that cosmetic psychopharmacology might actually enhance the link between happiness and experience. The Council's arguments against cosmetic psychopharmacology depend heavily on the mistaken belief that Prozac and similar antidepressants are mood brighteners in healthy subjects. The empirical evidence, however, clearly indicates that these drugs are not forms of cosmetic psychopharmacology, thus negating much of the Council's arguments. The use of pharmaceutical agents to enhance mood or personality in normal individuals should not be rejected a priori. Instead, the effects of each agent on the individual and on society must be weighed using sound ethical reasoning and the best evidence available.

Advisory Committees↗