The Stem Cell

The President’s Council on Bioethics (PCBE) is a seventeen-member commission of scholars charged with advising George W. Bush on the ethics of biological innovation, including regenerative medicine. Originally, the PCBE had only three basic scientists, now it only has one: Michael Gazzaniga (Gazzaniga is the author of the award-winning book The Ethical Brain).

One of the originals, Elizabeth Blackburn, a professor of biology and physiology at the University of California, San Francisco, was unceremoniously dumped from the council in 2005. Blackburn recounts her rollercoaster tenure on the council in yesterday’s New York Times. She wrote about her dissatisfaction with the council’s vote on a “moratorium” on embryonic stem cell research in a paper entitled Thoughts of a Former Council Member. She said “[A] moratorium is used to gain more information…. But that information can only be gained by performing the same research that the moratorium proposes to halt.”

Noting that adult stem cell research alone can’t answer important questions about disease, she continues, “But one cannot find answers to questions about oranges by doing all of one’s research on apples. Some research on apples will be useful because it will provide information that applies to fruit in general. Diseases, however, are very specific.”

Free copies of the PCBE report, along with other documents issued by the council, can be ordered here.