Human Dignity and Bioethics

28 | F. Daniel Davis
to articulating and justifying his policy on federal funding for embryonic
stem cell research. In his speech, the President also announced
his intent to establish, by executive order, a “president’s council on
bioethics” to advise him on this and other contentious issues engendered
by the remarkable but sometimes morally troubling progress of
biomedicine and biotechnology. As the establishment of the National
Commission was spurred by ethical problems of broad, public significance,
so too was the President’s Council born of a serious bioethical
problem—with implications not only for such moral questions as
What should or should not be done in the sphere of biomedical research?
but also for such arguably more fundamental questions as What is a
human being? and What are the implications of our humanity for how
we pursue the growth of our knowledge and its applications in practice?
With the National Commission and the President’s Council, these
problems—the subject matter of an ever-expanding field of experts,
specialized organizations, and journals—have been brought into the
public square for analysis, discussion, reflection, and debate by policymakers,
legislators, and the citizens to whom they are accountable.
This is the rationale for any national forum in public bioethics.
As initiatives in public bioethics, the National Commission and
the President’s Council have a key feature in common: they are both
creatures of the Federal Government, formed to pursue their missions
in the full light of public observation and scrutiny and with
public participation. The differences between the two bodies, however,
are arguably more interesting and revealing; and this is also true
of the Belmont Report when compared to this volume, and of the
principle of respect for persons compared to the concept of human
dignity. Consider, first, the agents of their respective formations. The
National Commission was established through the legislative authority
of the U.S. Congress, as was its immediate successor, the President’s
Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine
and Biomedical and Behavioral Research. By contrast, like its immediate
predecessor, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission,* the
President’s Council was launched by executive authority and, strictly
speaking, answers to the President and to the President alone.
The mandates of the two bodies reveal an even more striking difference.
The U.S. Congress endowed the National Commission with
* Created by Executive Order 12975, signed by President Clinton in 1995.