Final Report (all chapters)

is competitive – as long as the market for power and influence is competitive, there is no reason
for concern. Consistent with this market metaphor, politicians trade political influence for
economic and other resources. Conversely, political constituencies gain power and influence by
providing politicians with the resources – financial and otherwise – needed for their re-election.
The final outcome of this complex trading process is a supposedly optimal distribution of power
and influence.
Political markets can be assumed to be efficient only if the political “trading” process is
governed by a few basic rules. A key requirement is that all interest groups are adequately
represented in the political arena. To the extent that the ensemble of all views represented by
interest groups is a sufficiently accurate representation of the views held by society as a whole,
one could argue that it is immaterial whether the general public has had an opportunity to
participate in the policy-making process. If all existing views have had a fair opportunity to be
heard, the market for political influence is likely to produce an efficient outcome of sort.
Conversely, a policy-making process characterized by limited political participation is a clear
indication of political failure and is likely to produce a distorted outcome.
Are reproductive medicine and biomedical research two policy domains characterized by
significant political failures? We believe this question must be answered in the affirmative, but
not in the ordinary sense. With regard to cloning and stem cell research, it appears that no key
political constituency has been unable to participate or has not been heard, and there is no reason
to believe that in the future any of these groups is likely be excluded from the political arena. In
this sense, one cannot speak of political failure. On the other hand, these groups are clearly not
representative of broader public sentiments and certainly cannot be considered a good proxy of
the views expressed by the general public.
There are only two main political camps in this policy domain, and all interest groups
involved can unambiguously be assigned to one or the other of these camps. At the one end of
the spectrum, we find scientific societies such as the American Association for the Advancement
of Science, the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research (CAMR), the Federation of
American Societies for Experimental Biology, and their allies – mainly single-issue advocacy
and patient groups like the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the Parkinson’s Action
Network, and Cures Now. Also in this camp we find the ART industry, represented mainly by
the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and the Society for Assisted Reproductive
Technology. On the other side of the political divide is an uncomfortable coalition of religious
organizations, such as the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Southern
Baptist Convention, socially conservative groups like the Family Research Council, and liberal
environmental groups.
AAAS, the premiere U.S. scientific organization, has advocated the ban on reproductive
cloning, but supports research cloning and embryonic stem cell research. AAAS favors a limited
form of “federal oversight” for this kind of research, but it is unclear what this position actually
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