CGS-authored
The International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) recently announced its "Guidelines for the Conduct of Embryonic Stem Cell Research." The results are not encouraging.
The Guidelines claim to "emphasize the responsibility of scientists to ensure that human stem cell research is carried out according to rigorous standard of research ethics." But saying it doesn't make it so. What the document actually does is paste a veneer of ethical analysis on top of the "anything goes" mentality that suffuses biotechnology and mainstream bioethics today.
Of course, what is deemed "ethical" in biotechnology depends in large part on, to borrow a phrase from President Bush, the deciders. Unsurprisingly, many of the members of the ISSCR "International Human Embryonic Research Guidelines Task Force," who wrote the Guidelines, are well known for advocating that scientists be given an open field.
University of Wisconsin bioethics professor R. Alta Charo, for example, has stated that a legal ban on all human cloning would violate scientists' First Amendment right to conduct research. Another task force bioethicist, Northwestern University's Laurie Zoloth, previously advocated applying what she considers...