Human Dignity and Bioethics

Human Dignity and Respect for Persons | 29
an ambitious but precisely detailed agenda, along with a set of specified
outcomes or required “deliverables”; with one exception, the
“deliverables” were all inquiries involving human subjects research,
anchored to the explicit expectation that their findings and recommendations
would inform, or even decisively shape, the formation of
federal law and regulation. Since its inception, the President’s Council
has labored under an altogether different mandate, as is clear in
this passage from Executive Order 13237:
The Council shall advise the President on bioethical issues
that may emerge as a consequence of advances in biomedical
science and technology. In connection with its advisory role,
the mission of the Council includes the following functions:
(1) to undertake fundamental inquiry into the human and
moral significance of developments in biomedical and behavioral
science and technology; (2) to explore specific ethical
and policy questions related to these developments; (3) to
provide a forum for a national discussion of bioethical issues;
(4) to facilitate a greater understanding of bioethical issues;
and (5) to explore the possibilities for useful international
collaboration on bioethical issues.
The “deliverables” that the Council has been expected to produce
are not specified reports on a prescribed list of topics: they are,
instead, advice to the President; a forum for public discussion and
to foster understanding of bioethical issues; and, by implication, the
fruits of its “fundamental” inquiries and of its explorations of “specific
ethical and policy questions.” As I previously noted, particular problems
in bioethics were important in the genesis of both the National
Commission and the President’s Council; and thus, in the creation
of both there was, more or less, a degree of external compulsion or
need. The agenda that the President’s Council has pursued has not,
however, been strictly tethered to the morality of embryonic stem
cell research, the dilemma that attended its birth. On several different
occasions, for varying lengths of time, the President’s Council
has explored this topic, as well as the related topic of human cloning,
and issued reports on both; but it has also undertaken inquiries
into biotechnology and human enhancement, assisted reproduction,