The Bush administration has removed two members of the bioethics advisory council– two who favored stem cell research.
The two were a medical ethicist and a biologist. They’ve been replaced by a neurosurgery specialist; a political theorist with a University of Chicago connection who writes about Montesquieu; and a political theorist who has started to do some work on biotechnology. Both of the political theorists have institutional affiliations that identify them as Straussian with a high degree of confidence, and both are established critics of biotech in general or stem cell research in particular– giving us some ex ante reason to think they were chosen by Straussian Leon Kass, my colleague at Chicago and the chair of the council. I’m all in favor of political theorists with University of Chicago connections who write about Montesquieu, really I am. But these changes have the clear intent and effect of making the advisory council more intellectually homogenous and less likely to air any dissent from Kass’ essentially religious and anti-science views.
The Straussian link to foreign policy is deeply overstated. That to the bioethics commission is much less widely-known– other than to longtime readers of Virginia Postrel’s blog– but much more real. The President is at complete liberty to replace members of the council; there’s no procedural irregularity here, no wrongdoing. Just a very bad idea, and one that illustrates the administration’s approach to science and research questions. After Kass was appointed chair of the council, much was made of the overall intellectual balance of the group. With the spotlight gone, that balance is getting replaced with something else altogether.
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