"Badethics": Obama Plans to Replace Bush’s Bioethics Panel

Piece by piece, the group of ethical, biomedical policy advisors that Bush assembled is being dismantled by Obama's administration:

Members of the President’s Council on Bioethics were told by the White House last week that their services were no longer needed and were asked to cancel a planned meeting, a council staff member said Wednesday.

The council was disbanded because it was designed by the Bush administration to be “a philosophically leaning advisory group” that favored discussion over developing a shared consensus, said Reid Cherlin, a White House press officer.

President Obama will appoint a new bioethics commission, one with a new mandate and that “offers practical policy options,” Mr. Cherlin said. (New York Times)

Call me a realist, but I'm pessimistic about the new council Obama will appoint. It's extremely telling what Cherlin had to say about the current members of the council: the replacement of "consensus" over philosophical "discussion", to my mind, means that Obama is not open to discussion on biomedical issues when he's already decided what his policy is going to be. 

However, such a mode of operating renders a bioethics council meaningless - in other words, a council that does not conduct rigorous philosophical discussion is nothing more than a rubber-stamping beauracracy.

This shift of emphasis and vision by Obama is especially troubling considering what promises he has made previously about having a more "ethical" administration that takes into consideration the wisdom of the "experts."

So are experts merely consensus-takers, in Obama's mind?

update: Peter Augustine Lawler, one of the council members who was just given his notice, has published his "Reflections on my Termination". A sample:

I was assured that "President Obama recognizes the value of having a commission of experts in bioethical issues to provide objective and non-ideological bioethics advice to his Administration." It's hard to deny that three shots were being taken here at the Bush Council. It was non-expert, unobjective, and ideological. I couldn't help but think that I, in particular, was being called an amateur faith-based ideologue, as I was by various Democrats and techno-libertarians during the election of 2004 when I was appointed, although it's doubtful that the man who signed the letter actually knows much of anything about me in particular.

There's actually a fourth shot, I think. For Obama, a valuable Council does nothing but offer advice to the administration. The Bush Council was actually given the additional mandate of public education, of developing a national dialogue on controversial bioethical issues.

How much notice was the council given to cease-and-desist? Oh, about 24 hours.

Related: "A Dim Future - After disbanding the President’s Council on Bioethics, what kind of advisory body will Obama put together?" in Catholic World Report online.

Full disclosure: the founder of the American Principles Project, which I recently joined, was founded by Dr. Robert George of Princeton, who served as a member of the President's council.