From Richard Ashcroft, Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine
Daniel Greenberg has a grouse against bioethicists for “pontificating and hand-wringing” over the rights and wrongs of therapeutic and reproductive cloning (20 July, p 25).
What he offers in its place is pontification without the hand-wringing. But he is sadly misinformed about who is responsible for the dawdling he so deprecates. There are not many bioethicists – even in the US – and their influence is small. The President’s Council on Bioethics has no members with chairs in bioethics, although it has several lawyers and theologians and distinguished scientists. The council was split on the moratorium: 7 against, 10 in favour.
However, presidents do find it useful to convene committees as instruments of policy making, particularly where the public mood is unpredictable. So Greenberg has what he wants: leadership and timely decision-making. Except that it went against what he wanted: therapeutic stem cell research. So much easier to blame the bioethicists, and to talk about dithering, than to face up to the realities of political pluralism.
London
