You and your annoying practical policy options
President Obama will appoint a new bioethics commission, one with a new mandate and that “offers practical policy options,” Mr. Cherlin said
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Under Dr. Kass in particular, the council was sometimes accused of being more ideological than its predecessors, but several bioethicists said that was not entirely fair.
“The other view is that all presidential commissions are structured in the context of a particular administration,” said Dr. Ruth Faden, a bioethicist at John Hopkins University.
Bioethics commissions, mostly at the presidential level, have been in existence since 1974. Composed mostly of biologists and ethicists, they have served to familiarize the public with new advances and have developed guidance on contentious issues like genetic engineering, human cloning and research on humans.
Under Dr. Kass the council produced reports with a somewhat philosophical bent on issues like the screening of newborns and how to determine death.
A sad day. I, for one, will miss being told not to eat ice cream in public.
(via GenomeWeb)
I work as an Assistant Professor in the Duke University Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy (although this site and its content are my own).
In 2007 I became the fourth subject in Harvard geneticist George Church's Personal Genome Project. As the PGP moves forward, I am chronicling the dawn of personal genomics, that is, people obtaining their genomic information for whatever reason(s) and figuring out what to do with it. I am interested in the relevant technologies and especially the attendant privacy and other ethical/legal/social issues.
This blog may also discuss some of my non-genome interests or, to paraphrase Dwight Yoakam, "Guitars, Cadillacs, hillbilly music, etc etc."
The header image comes from the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange's multimedia performance piece, "Ferocious Beauty: Genome."