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OPINION
SPECIAL TO MSNBC

Jan. 17 — All right, we can all collectively exhale. The bioethics committee that President Bush promised to appoint back in August has finally been named. This is the group that the president said would help guide his struggles with the divisive issues of cloning, stem cell research and the creation of human embryos for research. So what sort of counsel is the newly announced committee likely to offer?

THE ETHICS BOAT the president has launched is stacked with members who lean to the political right, who will rely on religious rather than secular principles to navigate its course and will do nothing to jostle any of the president’s already espoused positions condemning stem cell research, cloning and the creation of human embryos for research.

Bush chose Leon Kass, a thoughtful and intelligent conservative who is outspokenly opposed to human cloning and euthanasia as the chair of his Bioethics Advisory Council. Kass also opposed IVF technology and still questions aspects of the procedure used by thousands of infertile couples.

Most ironically of all, the administration’s appointments to the council, while bearing impressive credentials, are all pretty much clones of Professor Kass — despite Bush’s much-publicized stance against human cloning.

Francis Fukuyama, Robert P. George, Gilbert Meilaender, James Q. Wilson, Charles Krauthammer, Mary Ann Glendon, and Alfonso Gomez-Lobo may not be names you recognize unless you spend significant periods of your time browsing the National Review, the Washington Times or the publications of the Heritage Foundation.

They are all individuals who would have no problem receiving a warm reception at neoconservative think tanks or Christian Coalition of America rallies. Pundits on the right such as George Will, William Safire and William Kristol are sure to gush over their selection.

At least three other members, while not positioned in as politically overt a posture as the others, are nevertheless very likely to lean hard toward the same end of the political spectrum. Add in the fact that a key aide of retiring

Congressman Dick Armey is the executive director of the council, mix in Chairman Kass’ well known aversion to current developments in biotechnology and it becomes pretty clear what destinations the new bioethics council will ultimately visit. None will be places that Bush doesn’t want to see.

It is also interesting that the bioethics council has almost no bioethicists on it. Plenty of theologians and theologically oriented scholars, a smattering of scientists and doctors but, hardly anyone drawn from the ranks of bioethics. This also should not come as a surprise.

The administration is already wary of bioethics as are those who dominate the the White House “think tank” on social and ethical issues. The makeup of the council reflects that fact that whenever bioethics goes public, politics takes center stage. It was true of President Clinton’s National Bioethics Advisory Commission and now it is true of this President’s Bioethics Council.

Given the slant of the council, it seems likely that many in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries, in the sciences and in medicine will be made very nervous by its composition. They should be. Advocates of the value of bold scientific progress are barely represented while those whose impulse is to be skeptical about scientific and medical advances abound.

Should it come as a surprise that, when all is said and done, presidents appoint councils to provide them with the precise advice that they want to hear? Not at all. The challenge for this new council is to provide advice that people besides the president will want to hear and can benefit from.

Arthur Caplan, Ph.D., is the head of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.