C
rypto-theocrats. Trumped-up philosopher kings. Naked neocons. Proud paternalists. Recall the deep suspicion that President George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics attracted.
Bioethics had been high on Bush’s agenda from the start. On August 9, 2001, he had given the first-ever televised presidential address devoted entirely to the subject, announcing that federal funding would be permitted for research on existing embryonic stem cell lines but not for research on new ones, as that would have meant the further destruction of human embryos. Then, on November 28, Bush issued an executive order establishing the President’s Council on Bioethics. But instead of packing it with the usual suspects — only three of the eighteen original members were full-time research scientists — Bush instead invited to the table political theorists such as Michael Sandel and theologians such as Gilbert Meilaender. Most controversially, he named as chair Leon Kass, a biochemist-turned-philosopher described by the contemporary press as a pessimistic thinker who, as reporter Nell Boyce put it at the time, “tends to dwell on the dark side of modern medicine.”