"This transcript has not been edited or
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FOURTH MEETINGThursday, June 20,
2002
Session 2: Human
Cloning 11: Public Policy
Options
CHAIRMAN KASS:
Could we start to reassemble, please?
All right. This is the
Council's, believe it or not, human cloning session 11, public
policy options, the first of two sessions on public policy in which
with no absolutely firm boundaries between them, we want first to
have a general discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of
available policy options, and then especially in the afternoon
gradually move toward the policy recommendations that we might put
forward.
I'd like to say a little bit by way of introduction
to this because I think this is a difficult and vexing subject, but
a very important one, and especially in the spirit of the
conversation that we've just heard, one that is in some ways more
important than the cloning issue itself.
It's very hard to
tell when one is in the middle of a historical situation what it
really means and whether it has the kind of signal importance that
some of us think it does. One would like to think not that we have
the authority over this matter, but one would like to think that one
would try to think about this matter in such a way that 15 or 20
years down the road one doesn't look back and say, you know, we
treated something as trivial which turned out to be massively
important," or conversely, we turned out to treat something which
was really quite trivial as if it was of world historical
significance.
I mean, I have my own hunches about this. I
don't know that they're shared, but I think it's at least important
to be mindful of the question that this could be something very
important.
Cloning, if it works, as we have already seen,
would be a new mode of human procreation, and it might also serve as
a kind of precedent for selecting in advance the genetic make-up of
children. So it is something in itself and something that belongs to
something larger than itself.
Cloning for biomedical
research, if it works, is a powerful tool for understanding and
treatment of human disease, but it also is an instance of the
production of new embryonic life solely for use and necessary
destruction.
And if it were legislatively provided for, this
would not be just permitted as it now is, but it would be officially
endorsed by U.S. law. So that is something to be reckoned
with.
Also, this debate about cloning is a new instance of at
least some tension in the longstanding, tacit, social contract
between science and technology, society and politics, on the other.
It is a social contract with a moral foundation, a foundation in
which scientists and researchers are encouraged to pursue the truth,
but in the service of the goods of the society that contract
necessarily being stressed or tested, when the things that
technology and science proposed to do or want to do might come in
conflict, in fact, with the values or norms of the
society.
And ordinarily we, at least in this country, have
allowed these things to go along without too much attention. This
now comes to be a test not just about the question of cloning, but
how this community will, in fact, deal with those questions when we
have goods in conflict, and whether there can be democratic
self-governance about these matters or whether there should be or
can be democratic self-governance about these matters.
So I
want to suggest to you that although it looks like a small, little
question, there are lots of things just in the penumbra of this that
I think are quit important.
Second, I think we've all seen
why this is so hard. We have in our previous meetings taken up the
questions of the ethical issues of cloning to produce children and
the ethical issues of cloning for biomedical research independently
of one another, and that makes perfectly good sense because the
moral issues that are raised there are, indeed, quite
different.
And in fact, a sign that they're different is
people can be opposed to the one and be in favor of the other, and
people who might be opposed to both will differ as to which they
think is worse.
It might, therefore, seem sensible to
disaggregate these two forms or these two uses of cloning and
develop independent public policies for each, and I think if anybody
has thought about this a little while sees that it's virtually
impossible. It's very difficult, if not impossible, to do
so.
And the reason is simple. I'm just stating the obvious,
but this is to at least make it clear why we are having such a hard
time. The reason is simple because both of these activities of
cloning begin in the same way with the initial act of cloning by
somatic cell nuclear transfer that produces the cloned embryo, and
therefore, it's difficult, perhaps impossible, to craft the policy
that deals with one, but does not tacitly, and usually explicitly,
affect the other.
A thoroughgoing attempt to prevent cloning
to produce children by banning the first step would obviously
prevent cloning for biomedical research. An attempt to promote
cloning by biomedical research might well have consequences for
cloning to produce children. An attempt to prevent cloning to
produce children at the step of the transfer of a cloned embryo to
initiate a pregnancy would tacitly approve the creation of the
cloned embryos for research.
And imposing penalties on
implantation while sanctioning creation, a policy that banned only
transfer to the uterus, would then require that the cloned embryos
be destroyed at risk of federal prosecution.
So these things
are, alas, mixed up together, and as the conversation has already
showed, even if one tried to craft policy through statutory
language, the difficulty of doing this is enormous. Let's say you
wanted to make a particular act illegal. You have to precisely
define what act is proscribed.
And when I first started on
this subject, I thought it very simple. It shall be unlawful to
attempt to clone a human being. But it's simple to say and vexing to
specify.
The question that is contested is: what do you mean
by a human being? Does it mean a child or adult, or does it also
mean the human embryo as a human being understood at that stage of
development?
And the definition of cloning is, therefore,
impossible to specify unless you've specified that in advance, and
attempting to clone, if you want to say, "You shall not attempt to
clone," that could either mean blocking somatic cell nuclear
transfer itself or the transfer of the resulting cloned embryo to a
woman..
Now, there would be a way of disentangling these two
things or at least having them separate if, in fact, it was done as
the British, in fact, did it or as some of the other nations have
done it, namely, they have a general policy on embryo research which
governs everything or they have a general policy on assisted
reproduction and embryo research.
And then the cloning
question fits in in some way. We don't have that, and that makes our
situation here, I think, terribly difficult.
Just a couple of
other things and then I think we can move to the discussion. It's
perfectly clear from the conversations we've had, especially on the
ethics of cloning for biomedical research, that we have a clash of
competing goods and interests, and it's also clear from the
discussion bearing on the question is this research
necessary.
This notion of necessity came up in the previous
discussion, and it is important to the moral analysis. There's a
dispute even on that question because we do not have full knowledge
about the science so that we proceed in this discussion as almost
everybody does whenever they do public policy under the veil of
ignorance, sometimes more, sometimes less, but always with the kind
of uncertainty about the future.
What that means is when one
moves from the discussion of ethics where one could sit in one's
armchair and construct one's hypotheses to the realm of policy, one
really has to move from the realm of principle to the realm of
prudence, which is not to say uninformed by the moral analysis, but
can't simply be settled by it.
And this means really thinking
about the ends that we're seeking, thinking about selecting the
fitting means always in the light of the circumstances, a very
complicated task always, and especially when the best simply might
be different from the best possible here and now. That might be the
situation in which we find ourselves.
And I would at least
like to suggest that the ethical analysis that we've been engaged in
is certainly pertinent here, but it has now to consider all kinds of
other things that are related to the complexity of what happens if
you actually try to give voice to your ethical intuitions at the
level of public policy, given the difficulties of drafting, given
the competing goods and the like.
There is a question, I
think, that will lurk beneath the surface of this discussion, which
is who bears the burden of proof and persuasion in these kinds of
matters. Is it the proponents who are proposing that we cross
certain kinds of moral boundaries or is it the people who want to
say no, when in a country, by and large, freedom is the rule? You
have to do more than sort of say certain kinds of things might
happen, but you have to show that they might likely happen and the
costs to the common good are sufficiently great before you restrict
people and even put them in jail.
I mean, these are important
things, I think, to keep in mind.
Let me just introduce the
specific proposals that we can consider. Then I would open the
discussion either on the general matters and then gradually move to
-- I'll go wherever you'd like, but we have, if you think about it,
one has, thinking now just about human cloning, and we've got, let's
say, Cloning 1 and Cloning 2. I mean cloning to produce children and
cloning for biomedical research.
There are two large
categories, allow and forbid, and under each category, there are two
possibilities: allow without regulation or allow with regulation;
forbid for now, forbid permanently.
Anybody who likes
matrices knows that you could make a four-by-four matrix, and you'd
get 16 possibilities. If you did it for yourself, you'd see that
there's a whole bunch of them that simply are not sensical, namely,
that you would forbid cloning for biomedical research and endorse
without regulation cloning for baby making.
So I think that
the option that sort of survive as even things to be thought about
are on a sheet that you should have in front of you. I'll simply
read them off, and I think part of what we want to do is discuss the
strengths and weaknesses of these.
One would be, in effect,
the position that says allow with no regulation; no legislative
action; professional self-regulation.
Second would be a ban
on a cloning to produce children, but with no regulation, neither
endorsement nor restriction of cloning for biomedical research, what
we're calling ban plus silence on the research.
Very hard to
do, by the way, to write that legislation so that it's simply
silent, but never mind.
Possibility three, ban on cloning to
produce children with regulation, permission but under regulation of
the use of cloned human embryos for biomedical research. Option
three called ban plus regulation.
Option four, regulation
across the board, no restriction -- no -- in other words, permit but
with regulation, something like the British agency where there's
permission, but all permission must be given under the rules set by
the Human Fertilisation and Embryological
Authority.
Possibility five would be the most restrictive
one: a ban on all human cloning, whether to produce children or for
biomedical research. Shorthand: ban on both.
Then two
proposals that consider the possibility of a temporary ban pending
further information or additional public debate.
Option six,
a ban on cloning to produce children with a moratorium, a moratorium
being understood to be a temporary ban, a ban, but with a fixed time
period on cloning for biomedical research. Option six, ban plus
moratorium.
And option seven, a moratorium on all human
cloning, whether to produce children or for biomedical research.
Shorthand name, moratorium on both.
If somebody has something
else, another plausible suggestion to add to this, this is enough,
but if we've left something out, by all means, feel free. And since
this is a general discussion and this is simply the fruit of the
staff's analysis with my own input, we might not have done this
right, but at least this is what we put before you for consideration
both in general terms and with different options with their various
strengths and weaknesses.
If there were a perfect solution
for this, we wouldn't be sitting around here talking.
The
floor is open. Frank.
PROF. FUKUYAMA: Well,
not to complicate your matrix unduly, but I do think there is
another option that would be my preferred option. That would
actually be a combination of number six and number there. That is to
say you have a ban plus a moratorium, but the explicit justification
for the moratorium is that you need the time to put into place a
regulatory, you know, apparatus as we've seen, you know, take six
year or eight years even under favorable circumstances to do
this.
And so, you know, the regulatory option is not a
short-term option. So I would think that some, you know, combination
of six and three is actually a logical --
CHAIRMAN
KASS: You mean six for the sake of
three.
PROF. FUKUYAMA: Yeah,
right.
CHAIRMAN KASS:
Janet?
DR. ROWLEY: Well, let me first just
comment on Frank's last comment. I believe the six years is not due
to the difficulty of putting in a regulatory apparatus, but rather
just getting legislation through. So that I think it's important to
separate the legislative process from the regulatory. At least that
would be my interpretation.
And I have to say in reading the
material that we were sent, I was concerned -- that we were sent
earlier -- I was concerned on page 6 of the chapter we're currently
considering that the burden of persuasion belongs to the proponents
of human cloning.
And I have to say since it is something
that is currently unregulated, though there certainly are
prohibitions on the funding of aspects of cloning, that I wonder why
the burden of persuasion is on the proponents rather than those who
want to change the present situation.
CHAIRMAN
KASS: Does someone want to join that?
Where
--
DR. ROWLEY: Page 6, Line 18.
I
mean, I think it's not our problem. Well, I think that the burden of
proof is on those who say that what is -- and I don't want to push
this too far because there are certainly aspects that I would not be
in favor of -- but at least in the private sector, the laissez-faire
attitude that is currently in place in the United States is a
practice of at least those who can get private funding.
And
it isn't only from companies because the Howard Hughes is also
providing funding for some development of embryos for research; that
the burden of proof ought to be on those who think that this
practice should be stopped rather than on those who say that some
component or some facets of the present situation -- that we have to
justify that component of the present situation.
And I would
just turn it around and say I think the burden of proof is on those
who say that components of the present situation should be
banned.
CHAIRMAN KASS: Yeah. I really raised
that as a general question in my opening remarks, and it really is
part of how you come at this question.
I mean, basically we
think in this country that you're free to do things until and unless
there are powerful public reasons of a serious harm to a public good
that keeps you from doing it.
DR. ROWLEY:
That's right, but this document says that, in fact, the burden of
proof was --
CHAIRMAN KASS: It was a
question on moral persuasion as opposed to -- if you follow the
second point, I think you'd see it on that same page, but could we
take up the question apart from the document? Because we really want
to talk about the issues and not about text at this
point.
And Janet, I think, has raised the right question.
Gil, do you want to speak to that question?
PROF.
MEILAENDER: Yeah, just a very brief comment to it. Although
it's right, as you said, that we in our society have as a sort of
general practice that we leave you free unless there seems to be
good reason not to, I think it would be a mistake to suppose that
there's been some kind of longstanding freedom to do research
cloning, which now all of a sudden we need to think about whether
there's justification to prohibit or regulate.
It hasn't, in
fact, been done for very long or there haven't been good reasons,
promising reasons to do it.
So it's not as if there's some
sort of longstanding practice that opponents are suddenly thinking
of stopping, and that makes a little bit of a
difference.
CHAIRMAN KASS: Yeah, and the
other thing that while it's not legislation, I mean, the various
states can do as they wish, but I remind everybody that our
predecessor body, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission didn't
deal, I think, with cloning for biomedical research, but did in its
embryo research paper make a distinction between -- and this is not
legislation -- but made a distinction between the use of embryos
left over in in vitro clinic and the creation of embryos
solely for research.
Whatever the moral weight of the
distinction is, and we've had some interesting discussions about
whether that's a distinction that can be upheld, that has at least
been the normative precedent of the climate.
Now, there are
new developments that always challenge those things, and that's
where we are, and Janet's question stands.
Michael, did you
want to say something?
PROF. SANDEL: Just
this briefly. The concept of burden of proof is a legal concept in
convicting of criminals, and I think when we try to transport it
into burden of moral argument, I think it doesn't help
us.
Nobody who holds one or another position is going to say,
"Well, the burden of argument is on me."
Everyone is going to
say, "Well, no, it's on the other side." Well, if that's the case,
let's just get to the arguments. I don't think anything is going to
be helped by haggling over who has the burden of making a better
argument.
CHAIRMAN KASS: Okay. After Rebecca
speaks, I'll let you get to the argument, I mean, if you'd
like.
I mean, if people want to weigh in on some of these
general things, fine, but if that's where people would like to go,
we should go there soon.
Rebecca,
please.
PROF. DRESSER: Well, maybe I'm
getting to the argument. I think implicit in that view -- and, you
know, there is a burden in civil proceedings as well that it would
be based on this special respect position, that is, that a human
embryo is not a piece of property or a person. It's something in
between. It's owed some respect. So if we're going to create it,
whether through cloning or some other procedure to be used in
research, there should be extremely good reasons.
And that's
where the burden of proof would be, to show that those reasons
exist.
CHAIRMAN KASS: Does someone want to
put their toe in the water and talk about the strengths and
weaknesses of the various options before us or --Michael, please,
and then Elizabeth.
DR.
GAZZANIGA:: For those of you who are on the
committee who are more familiar with policy, I think of it as
sausage, but know all of the subtleties of
--
CHAIRMAN KASS: The work for prudence
statesman, Michael.
(Laughter.)
DR.
GAZZANIGA:: Could someone discuss if there's a
definitional reality to the difference between guidelines versus
regulations in "governmentese"?
Because the current
recombinant DNA model is really a set of guidelines, as I understand
them, and not really a set of regulations, and I'm sure that's a
determinological question we should get established here as to what
we mean?
CHAIRMAN KASS: Someone want to take
that? Rebecca, do you want to get in the --
please.
DR. BLACKBURN: So my brief re-review
of the recombinant DNA guidelines done on the Internet last night, I
have to confess, was that it is applying to institutions that get
any kind of NIH money, even though it's nothing to do with
necessarily the project that is being considered.
And as far
as I could tell, the force of it was the ability to get or not get
NIH funding. And what the noncompliance consequences were, I am not
familiar with, and maybe you can if somebody knows that.
It's
meant to be a deterrent against violating those guidelines, but I
don't know what forced the deterrence against violating, what form
that took..
DR. ROWLEY: Well, I can answer
that. You lost your NIH funding, and I believe you could not apply
for new funding for a period of time, whether it was three years or
five years, but for those dependent on NIH funding, it was a pretty
serious consequence, though not criminal.
CHAIRMAN
KASS: Well, I think we still need more on the general
point, right? That is --
PROF. MEILAENDER:
Well, what's at the bottom, I think most of us -- I guess we're all
sort of publicly split on the question of the ethics of biomedical
cloning, half of us for it and so forth.
The recombinant DNA
story had at the time a public fear associated with it that there
was going to be something oozing out of laboratories that was going
to transform the biological world. And in this particular context
that we're being asked to think, there's no real biologic risk
involved. The notion of regulation is for social concern for
people's values and views. There's nothing at risk in terms of risk
to the general culture in terms of health.
And so I think,
therefore --
CHAIRMAN KASS: The women egg
donors is certainly one of the issues that would
--
DR. GAZZANIGA:: But that
aside, I mean, the actual cloning procedure itself and so
forth.
CHAIRMAN KASS:
Right.
DR. GAZZANIGA:: So
this is just why the question of regulation -- we actually just mean
regulation here in terms of almost satisfying social concerns and
people's moral concerns and not because there's a biologic risk
involved, too, as a result of the laboratory act
itself.
CHAIRMAN KASS: I think that's
largely right here, and as we heard in the previous presentations, I
mean, among the things that are subject to regulation, I mean,
guidelines might include things like the steps of licensure and what
you have to do to remain in compliance where as regulations might
include things that are just out of bounds or there might be
regulation of commerce.
There is a regulation which says
composated surrogacy is illegal. You know, uncompensated is
permitted. Those are regulations, and if I understood at least the
presentation of the Canadian system there, there are penalties that
are attached to that
Alfonso and then Frank and Rebecca, I
guess.
PROF. GÓMEZ-LOBO: Can I address that
briefly? I think that when I think about reproductive cloning, I
think the reason why regulation is needed and perhaps even something
like a criminal statute is because, on the one hand, we know that
certain actions can produce tremendous harm here to the women
donating the eggs, to the woman doing through the pregnancy, and to
the child himself or herself.
So it's not just because of any
sort of vague social concerns. I mean, we're here talking about very
central goods that hopefully our society will
protect.
DR. GAZZANIGA:: I
was thinking only about the biomedical cloning obviously, not the
reproductive cloning.
CHAIRMAN KASS: Okay. I
have Frank, Rebecca, Janet -- no. Your name is on the list, and I
don't know whether it was for the last time. Okay. Thank
you.
Frank, and then Rebecca.
PROF.
FUKUYAMA: Okay. So is it --
CHAIRMAN
KASS: And then Robby.
PROF.
FUKUYAMA: -- appropriate to jump back into the
substantive?
CHAIRMAN KASS: The floor is
yours, sir.
PROF. FUKUYAMA: Well, I guess
what I'd like to do is just lay out my position of how I proceed
from my basic ethical position to the actual public policy because,
as I just said, I'm in favor of six leading to three, and I would do
it for the following reasons.
I put myself in the camp of
special moral status, that is to say I do not believe that an embryo
has the same moral status as an infant. I believe moral status
rises. I mean, I'll just -- in addition to the text that we were
given, I thought it gave a fairly good defense of that
position.
I would just add a couple of examples because I
know Alfonso contested the idea that you could have a coherent
doctrine of rising moral status.
But I think that, you know,
in fact, we attribute that to human beings all the time. For
example, children have a different moral status than adults.
Children are not given political rights. They can't vote because
they don't have full human reason, and you know, political rights
are, you know -- it's not the right to life, but it is an important
component of, you know, the class of individuals to whom we
attribute.
Now, I would just like to say I don't want to
start a big argument over this. I'm just trying to state my
position.
DR. MCHUGH: Oh, why don't you open
that door?
(Laughter.)
CHAIRMAN KASS:
The record notes that that's not a universal opinion in this
room.
PROF. FUKUYAMA: And, you know, I know
we could argue for the rest of this session over that. I'm just
telling you what my view is.
However, I believe that, you
know, there is some moral status that is, you know -- that
differentiates an embryo from just another clump of cells, and I
will give you another analogy for another group of -- a case similar
to this, which is bodies of dead people.
We attribute a
special moral status to those. If your Uncle Eddie dies in your
living room, you can't just dump the body into a dumpster. You have
to take a lot of -- it's a highly regulated, you know, set of
actions that happens when somebody dies because we believe that even
though this was not a moral agent, you know, that that deceased
corpse is, you know, due a certain amount of respect that is
different from other kinds of tissues or different from a dead
animal body, and so forth.
And it can be used for
experimental purposes, you know, medical schools and so forth. And
so we regulate it very carefully.
Now, my particular fear is
about research cloning, not with the procedure itself, I would have
to say, but more with precedence and slippery slopes and other
things that may proceed if we simply permit it in a completely
unregulated way.
Again, a lot of this was articulated in the
report, but for example, I would not want in three or four years'
time for the medical research community to come back and say, "Yes,
in fact, we do need to get not just stem cells out of embryos. We
need to get entire organs or fetal eggs or tissues out of fetuses.
And, by the way, we should be able to do that because, you know,
what's the difference? We already extract stem cells from embryos.
So why not go about this?"
And the same arguments will be
trotted out that we're going to save X number of lives, cure X
number of diseases if only we can do that.
And I believe
that, you know, there is an important role difference between an
embryo and a fetus, and I definitely would not like to see the
latter thing happen, and I don't want the precedent of research
cloning on embryos to be used as a precedent for allowing other
things further down the line, human animal hybrids.
You
know, I mean, there are a lot of things that are bad in the other
legislation in Canada and the U.K. that are example so categories of
things that are not issues right now, but where we could get to
based on precedents that we set in our policy towards research
cloning.
Therefore, I believe that the appropriate solution
is to permit it under a strict set of guidelines that would involve
no research past, you know, 14 days. I mean some -- you've got to
pick some fairly arbitrary number, and you know, I think actually
the outlines of the kinds of regulations; we could argue about this
or that specific provision, but a lot of those have been laid out in
the legislation that exists in other countries.
And I think
that under those circumstances most of my, in a way, prudential
fears about permitting this kind f research to go ahead would be
satisfied.
And that's why I think that, in fact, the optimal
solution from my standpoint would be the regulatory option rather
than the complete ban.
Now, again, I'm hoping to short
circuit a big argument over moral status because I just don't think
we're ever going to convince each other. I would just say, you know,
to those that want the complete ban that it looks like, given the
realities of politics in the senate right now, that we're simply not
going to have option five, the ban on both. Okay?
So then the
position defaults to option one, which is essentially no ban on
anything, and I guess what I would just ask you to do is to consider
seriously, you know, in the real world of politics whether no ban on
anything is better than, you know, my proposed solution, which would
be a ban on the things that we can agree on banning, which is
reproductive cloning, and then a moratorium leading to a series of
rules that would satisfy, you know, I think a lot of the
precedential and desensitization kinds of issues that I think are
very real ones in permitting research cloning to go
ahead.
CHAIRMAN KASS: Could I make a
procedural suggestion? We've tried and, I think, pretty much
succeeded even as this debate swirls around us to keep an eye on it,
but to have our own discussions here, and it's true that when one
makes prudential recommendations, one would be foolish not to notice
what's going on around us, but at least at the first pass I think we
should talk about what we think would be best were it up to
us.
And one could then make some adjustments. Frank's point
is well taken, but I would rather we not immediately sort of start
guessing what might work, what might work in the Senate if they were
to listen to us. They're unlikely to in any case. We should try to
figure out -- we should try to recommend what we think is the right
thing to do.
Let's see. I've got a queue, and I hope
everybody will get into it. Let's see. I've got Rebecca, Robby,
Michael, Elizabeth, Mary Ann.
PROF. DRESSER:
I agree with Frank that there are a lot of similarities between
three and six, ban plus moratorium and ban plus regulation. I think
three is really a de facto moratorium, and of course, the difference
is that it would be de facto moratorium getting the planning going,
the system going.
And in connection with three, I wonder if
when we say "regulation," that there are a number of principles, I
think, as we've heard, and certainly I can think of a number of
other principles that a regulatory system could have in place if,
you know, it were regulating biomedical research cloning.
So
I wonder if it would be worthwhile discussing more substance and
procedures. I think we had an interesting discussion this morning
about who should participate in this regulatory body. I personally
very much am in favor of a large component of people who are not
from a scientific or medical background being involved in making
judgments about when a proposal to clone research embryos might be
justified.
And I would also want to include not just -- even
though this is against my self-interest, I suppose, it seems so
often when people say there should be public members, lawyers end up
being the public members, and it sounds as though in the U.K. that's
frequently true.
I do think that there is an important place
for ordinary people. I think that this problem of trying to get
people who do not represent one interest group, but yet are
thoughtful, involved, and interested in moral questions and not just
ciphers is a challenging one, but I really think it's one worth
pursuing.
So perhaps we might talk about if there were to be
a regulatory structure how it would work and what specific
principles different people might favor.
And then I just
thought I'd throw this out. This is probably off the wall, but I
thought of it this morning. One concern I know that some people have
with biomedical research cloning is that it would, if it were
permitted, it would put the government in the position of requiring
the destruction of human embryos.
And I wondered if anyone
would feel any differently if there were a no freezing rule or a no
preservation rule in research so that in some respects you could say
the embryos are allowed to die rather than actively
destroyed.
And then, on the other hand, what kind of a
scientific impact would that have I you weren't able to freeze the
embryos in research?
I thought of that on the exercise bike
this morning, and I thought I'd throw it
out.
CHAIRMAN KASS: Michael
Sandel.
PROF. SANDEL: Well, though I share
much of the spirit and even much of the substance of Frank's
position, I have just a small qualification that I would add and
suggest, and perhaps he wouldn't object to this first.
I
don't think, as someone who holds a position close to the one on the
substance that Frank has articulated, I don't think that we should
urge colleagues or fellow citizens who hold the equal moral status
view to support a moratorium instead of a ban for the following
reason.
A moratorium, as Leon pointed out, might be justified
if you say that you need further information about the science or
about whether the science is really necessary.
But if you
hold the view that ethically, regardless of the benefits, ethically
it's wrong, it's like killing a baby for a good end; it's wrong to
extract stem cells and to destroy the embryo; then a moratorium
which says, well, we need more information doesn't really capture
that position.
A moratorium, after all, presupposes that the
practice is not ethically impermissible, but we need to really find
out about the science if it's necessary. Will the therapies work?
Are there other ways of doing it scientifically?
But to
accept a moratorium rather than a ban presupposes that maybe some
time down the road this would be morally permissible, and otherwise,
the principal position is a ban.
So I don't think that we
should say, "Look. Your view isn't going to prevail in the Senate,"
and who knows whether that's true or not. Even if it were true, I
don't think we should be in the position of trying to persuade
colleagues who hold the equal moral status view in good conscience
to say, "Don't support a ban. Support a moratorium," because the
moratorium doesn't capture that moral position.
It sends to
the public and to ourselves and to the President a different
message. It says this is not fundamentally wrong for all time.
That's why we want to have an open mind. That's why we want to see
how the science unfolds.
Having said that, I would just want
to pick up on a point that Rebecca just made for the view that those
who don't hold the equal moral status view, but who hold some -- but
who would still accord respect to the embryo, I think Rebecca had a
slightly different way of addressing Frank's
concern.
Position three Rebecca just said, and I was struck
by this, is a de facto moratorium because position three says it's
not morally impermissible for all time, but we don't want
commodification; we don't want exploitation. We want to establish a
limit, whether it's 14 days or others. We want to license and
conduct prior review of all research involving cloned
embryos.
Well, if the regulations even in general terms are
specified along those lines, then position three, ban plus
regulation, could say under the regulatory half of it that only
instances of cloning for biomedical research shall be permitted that
observe these various restrictions, no buying and selling, no
modification, and so on, and that are licensed by some authority or
border commission yet to be established.
And if you
established, Frank, as one of the regulations the licensing
requirement, then by definition it couldn't go forward until that
board or that authority were in place.
So that's why I think
your concerns, which I share, could be perfectly well met within the
compass of number three, drawing upon Rebecca's suggestion and
listing among the regulations the licensing requirement, which
wouldn't exist, and therefore, the permission couldn't be given
until that board and those regulations were already established and
existing.
CHAIRMAN KASS:
Elizabeth.
DR. BLACKBURN: I'd like to
continue to draw on this question of the moratorium, de facto or
otherwise, and in thinking about a moratorium as had been proposed
in number six, but I'm certainly listening to what's being said
about number three with respect to it being de facto moratorium -- I
see a lot of force in that -- I just do want to raise some points
about a moratorium.
It sounds tempting to have a moratorium
to get more information, but I really am trying to think hard what
is the information that one is going to get if the very kind of
information we want to get about promise of the possible benefits of
the research is not going to be allowed to take place?
So
then the question is: well, could you get that information from
other kinds of research?
So I thought hard about this. Can
you get that? And I really think you can't get that kind of
information, and let me just give you a few examples of
it.
Say, for example, with current, let's say, excess in
vitro fertilization embryos, what you would get would be some
set of embryos, but the kind of information you'd need about them,
the ability to have disease models, the ability to have certain
genetic diversity that you knew something about at least, you just
wouldn't have that. And so you would really hobble the information
you would get out.
And then, secondly, if one were thinking
about somatic cell nuclear transfer derived embryos, what can they
give you besides excess in vitro fertilized
embryos?
And I thought very hard, well, you know, what do
they give you and is it substantive, and again, I think it is
substantive, first, for those reasons I just said, and secondly,
that you can do things in terms of finding out some of the key
issues about the therapeutic value of cloning for biomedical
research derived embryos.
For example, what would be the
immune rejection issue? There are a lot of really good in
vitro type of examinations one could do to get at this question
that you couldn't do otherwise with animal systems, for example, and
animal models have been the only source of information on this topic
to date, and we know that animal models are not valid models in a
lot of biological questions that we have about humans.
And I
can, you know, cite various disease sorts of cases and things that
are relevant for cancer in the mouse versus the human. They are very
different. They play out differently.
So I do want to say
that the problem then is that if one said, "Well, let's have a
moratorium and wait for more information that will give us a better
informed set of facts on which we could move ahead," we won't get
those facts unless the information can be got from the somatic cell
nuclear derived embryos.
I just can't see how the information
-- so then there's a real inconsistency because, you know, some
members of the Council, you know, have concerns about the ethical
problems with cloning for biomedical research based on embryo
status, but it seems like from our deliberations, you know, probably
a good half of us don't have ethical problems with this.
And
so we all have said this is important enough to move ahead with, and
so then if it's important enough to move ahead with, then we don't
want to just hobble the ability to do it properly.
So my
feeling is the moratorium then was a real concern to me because it
seemed to me actually counterproductive to what we are thinking of
as the possible good that would come out of this. And so I think
back then to what I think Rebecca said, which is sort of returning
to the point of in effect, if one does have appropriate licensing
for regulation -- licensing which would include, you know -- be
included in the regulation, then in a way that does take care of
it.
I think imposing a moratorium per se does not achieve
anything, and I think it's actually counterproductive for what we
feel might be the good coming out of the proceeding
forward.
CHAIRMAN KASS: Elizabeth, could I
ask you just directly on the science?
DR.
BLACKBURN: Yes.
CHAIRMAN KASS:
Granted that eventually if this is to be shown to be useful in human
beings, it could only be done by experimentation with human beings,
but --
DR. BLACKBURN: Oh, Leon, before that,
there's much in vitro work that could be done before
--
CHAIRMAN KASS: I'm not talking about
therapy. I'm talking about --
DR. BLACKBURN:
Okay. Sorry.
CHAIRMAN KASS: -- I'm talking
about --
DR. BLACKBURN: You mean only on
cloned embryos.
CHAIRMAN KASS: Yes. I'm
sorry.
DR. BLACKBURN: Stem cells derived
from cloned embryos, yes.
CHAIRMAN KASS:
Ordinary stem cells are not in the discussion here. I mean stem
cells derived from in vitro -- adult and embryonic stem cells
derived from sexually fertilized embryos are not part of this
discussion. Just on the question of work with embryos produced by
somatic cell nuclear transfer.
DR.
BLACKBURN: Right, right.
CHAIRMAN
KASS: Right. For the most part, we've had proposals about
how this work could be useful both in terms of deriving basic
knowledge and possibly therapeutic benefit. I think it's fair to say
that there's very little evidence available to us now in the science
as to whether that promise will be realized or not.
Would it
not be relevant to see whether some of that work could be done in
animals to the point of actually encouraging us to believe that the
human work would work?
And wouldn't it -- second point,
there's a claim that there is a unique benefit to be had from
working with cloned human embryos and tissues derived therefrom, but
since part of the question has to do with the necessity and whether
there are other morally nonproblematic alternatives be taken up
before certain boundaries are crossed, what if it should turn out
that the work that we heard about last time from Dr. Verfaillie,
which by the way I think is about to be published today or tomorrow
in Nature?
One would get the variety of stem cells
from the whole plethora of disease models. One would be able to
study the differentiation. Wouldn't there be some burden before one
sort of crosses this line to actually say -- we really have some
evidence to say not only that this stuff will work and will be
promising. We've done work in animals, but also that we don't have
other morally nonproblematic alternatives.
Is that part of
the way we think about the necessity of doing this as opposed to
it's interesting, very useful?
DR.
BLACKBURN: I think of course alternative methods and all
avenues, I think, are important to explore in getting the kind of
basic understanding which will then be very important for getting
usefully therapeutic information, you know, be it of the tissue
generative type or other kinds of broader information.
So let
me take your points perhaps in reverse order. The question of what
will adult stem cells and their reported plasticity give us, we
won't know that from the publication
tomorrow.
CHAIRMAN KASS: No, that's for
sure.
DR. BLACKBURN: It's very
controversial, and there are many different interpretations out
there in the field.
I just recently attended a workshop on
this to get myself well informed on this. We're not going to know
about adult stem cells being the one and only way to do this, and
Catherine herself has certainly --
CHAIRMAN
KASS: I didn't say one and only, I
think.
DR. BLACKBURN: No, no. And she
herself pointed out the value of keeping the avenues open because we
don't know which will be best. So certainly adult stem cell
research, I think everyone agrees, should certainly be pursued
vigorously for what it could be useful for, but it's not going to be
the only thing, and it will not answer for us whether it's the only
possible source of --
CHAIRMAN KASS: But let
me --
DR. BLACKBURN: -- the information we
can get out.
CHAIRMAN KASS: But let me
persist on this because the question -- on the issue of the
moratorium, I mean, one of the arguments for a moratorium would be
right now we have mostly -- and I'll exaggerate -- right now we have
mostly promise and virtually no evidence.
DR.
BLACKBURN: Well, except in animal
models.
CHAIRMAN KASS: With respect to the
cloning, with respect to the cloning.
A moratorium would, in
fact, perhaps answer this question about the unique value of this.
It might or it might not, but it's not -- that is at least -- if the
question is -- sorry. Let me put this -- and, by the way, I'm not
plumping for a particular outcome.
I think just as the side
that says you shouldn't go forward because there might be harms has
to do more than speculate about the harms, but show that they're
likely and that they're serious, so it seems to me that the side
that says there has to be benefits has to do more than wave the
flag.
And also if you're crossing a moral boundary, then it
seems to me something of the burden of the uniqueness or the
necessity of this. And if we don't have the evidence of the
necessity, that it seems to me is also part of the moral
deliberation.
It doesn't settle the matter. There are some
people who say this research should never be done, but I'm basically
asking the scientists in the group to not simply say, "Well, we
won't know." But does it count? And could we find out?
At the
moment we don't have the animal research, and we haven't really
tried the other alternative. What would be so terrible about saying
take four or five years and find out what the alternative
is?
That would be my question.
DR.
BLACKBURN: Well, I think that you would be so hobbling the
investigation as to make it -- you see, you're saying let's use
apples to learn about oranges, and that's the issue, oranges being
the cloned somatic cell nuclear transfer derived organisms.. Because
they really can provide a very different set of stem cells in which
you can do experiments that you wouldn't be able to do with the in
vitro fertilized excess embryo route, for example, because of the
kinds of disease models and genetic variability you can
get.
You really cannot get that from what we have in hand.
The second issue then is animal models. Of course, you know,
everyone wants to use as much as possible the animal models, and
there's no doubt that they have provided some evidence as we heard
from John Gearhart, that there's some interesting and very
interesting, you know, provocative and I'd say promising -- I know
you're devaluing the word "promising" -- but promising therapeutic
proof of principle demonstrations that have gone on in animal
models.
CHAIRMAN KASS: They were rejected in
that animal.
DR. BLACKBURN: Sorry. What was
rejected?
CHAIRMAN KASS: I'm sorry. Let me
just desist. Sorry.
DR. BLACKBURN: So this
is not in any way to say that animal modeled research is not
valuable, but in the end it doesn't tell us about certain things
about human diseases.
Just take my own field, if you want me
to get very substantial. The role of telomese (phonetic) and
telomerase in development of cancer in a mouse plays a very
different course out than it plays in humans. We do not learn the
same things, even though the list of actors is the same.
The
thing that they play out is really different, and in the mouse it
didn't tell you what was important in the human.
So it's just
one very tiny example. So I think scientifically we just won't learn
what we would learn if -- when I say "we," I mean the community is
large. I don't do this research -- but one wouldn't learn the same
kinds of things.
So that's why I'm thinking the moratorium
imposed per se actually -- you know, it actually prevents the very
purpose that it's supposedly to produce.
CHAIRMAN
KASS: Janet, to this?
DR. ROWLEY:
I'd like to make several points, one of which is for most of the
biomedical community that depends on NIH for support, there is
already a moratorium, and there has been a moratorium for years on
funding any sort of research on embryos, embryonic stem cells, et
cetera.
So that is the present situation. If you go to
private organizations or you go to companies, it's different, but
for the vast majority of scientists, we are already in a time of
moratorium.
Just as an aside, I haven't seen Catherine's
paper in Nature, but at least up until a couple of months ago, her
adult stem cells ironically derived from bone marrow could not
produce hematopoietic stem cells.
So they can be transformed
into everything else, except hematopoietic stem cells, and this just
shows a limitation of that particular system.
And the more
substantive point is that as I would envision a regulatory body, and
again, one that we all hope will be constituted of the very
thoughtful individuals, the proposed research on embryos would come
before such a body for scientific, as well as ethical
review.
The scientific review should be very -- should look
very carefully at what is the proposal from the particular
investigator. What is the unique role that that research plays? And
why is the use of somatic cell nuclear transfer into oocytes derived
from volunteers or whatever source? Why is that the only way to do
this research?
So I think in a thoughtful pattern of
regulation you would already have answered the questions that you're
raising.
And I agree with Elizabeth. We are already in a
moratorium. Extending the moratorium only impedes scientists who
would like to get at transferring or transforming a promise into
some reality at least in certain circumstances.
So that I
think that the thoughtful development of a regulatory body is really
a critical aspect of this. I was taken by the comments that Lori
made in her presentation to us about the U.K. That legislation, as I
understand, and I may be misquoting you and you can speak for
yourself obviously and educate me and others, is for the most part
relatively general, though obviously the newest one preventing or
banning reproductive cloning is fairly specific, but the legislation
is fairly general, and it is, I gather, assumed that this regulatory
body will be the one that will over time review the situation,
modify the regulations based on an evolving set of knowledge and
make regulations at the time that are appropriate for that evolving
set of knowledge.
And the other thing you said was that there
are working groups of five individuals, I believe, and much of these
or at least some of the specific details go to those working groups
for their evaluation as long as they're not policy issues maybe
before they go to the larger group of individuals.
And I
would envision, as well, that in institutions that already have
institutional review boards for looking at matters that deal with
human tissue, any research that I do in my laboratory on patient
material is already reviewed and approved by our institutional
review board before it goes to anyone for any consideration or
funding.
I think with all of those levels of review and
consideration that one of the important issues here is more how to
develop a regulatory body, and I don't think that we need to
consider a moratorium as one of the options.
Did I
misspeak?
MS. KNOWLES: The only thing that I
would correct is that it's actually not the authority that makes the
regulations. The regulations are made through the parliamentary
process, regulations to the act. So adding more to the act through
regulations is quite a cumbersome and official process.
But
they framed the act generally so that the licensing body, the HFEA,
has significant discretion in its licensing functions so that they
go through a number of steps and really get a lot of information,a
nd that's where the discretion is.
CHAIRMAN
KASS: I have Mary Ann next.
PROF.
GLENDON: So far in this discussion only two reasons have
been mentioned as justifications for the moratorium. One is the time
necessary to prepare regulations, which as Rebecca pointed out
imposes a de facto moratorium, and the other is time for research,
which has given rise to a certain debate.
But there are at
least two other reasons. One is the reason that was mentioned by Dr.
Kass from the very first day when he spoke about the purpose of this
commission, and that is to raise the level of the national
conversation.
And I would think that those who favor a
moratorium for purposes of preparing regulation would also include
among their reasons the idea of having a broader public debate, the
kind of deliberation that we expect in a democratic society and that
we haven't really had yet in the United States about these
complicated issues.
So, Frank, these remarks are really
addressed to you. It seems to me that what you are proposing is not
a hybrid of three and six, but rather something that fits quite
comfortably under six, that is ban plus moratorium.
And the
reasons for the moratorium would include in your case probably
preparation of regulations and public deliberation, maybe time for
more research or maybe not, and there are many of us who might have
a combination of all of those reasons or various combinations of
those reasons.
So that I just ask you to think about whether
you really need to have a whole new category or whether you'd be
comfortable with the sixth one.
PROF.
SANDEL: Could I just address a quick question to Mary
Ann?
Would those be reasons for you to prefer moratorium to a
ban on both?
PROF. GLENDON: I'm comfortable
with alternative number six.
PROF. SANDEL:
But how would you answer the question whether they would be reasons
on balance to prefer the moratorium to a ban?
PROF.
GLENDON: Well, I'm going to sound like a law professor now,
but I don't think that -- I think one can exaggerate the difference
between moratorium and ban.
One of the glories of
legislation is -- and here I have to quibble a little bit with
something that Leon said. You described the ban as forbidding
permanently.
CHAIRMAN KASS: Yeah, that's
always reasonable.
PROF. GLENDON:
Legislation can always be revisited, unlike court decisions on
constitutional grounds, which are much more difficult to revisit. So
I don't see the distinction between ban and moratorium as
crucial.
CHAIRMAN KASS: Bill May and then
Gil.
Did you want just a quick word?
Sorry.
PROF. FUKUYAMA: It's funny that
you're pushing now back to six because I was actually persuaded by
Rebecca and Michael on three interpreted, you know, as a de facto
moratorium just for the following reason.
If you had to delay
research cloning until you got a regulatory system in place and made
that link explicit, it would give a real incentive to put that
system -- you know, to get that thing up and running. Whereas if you
simply had a moratorium with, you know, a general idea that you
wanted a regulatory system at the end of the moratorium, you could
easily imagine the moratorium expiring, everything going back to
everything is permitted, and the regulatory system, because of all
of the problems in getting all of the interest groups lined up, you
know, and so forth simply not materializing.
So I actually --
again, I hate to fall back into these tactical considerations, but I
actually am sort of persuaded that three interpreted as a de facto
moratorium may actually be preferable to my earlier combination of
three and six or your, you know, interpretation of
six.
CHAIRMAN KASS: I've got a queue. Bill
May and then Gil.
DR. MAY: The earlier
discussion of the intermediate status of the embryo, it seems to me,
has a double implication, and most of the emphasis if followed is
that it allows for research as opposed to those who think of it as
having full participant status.
But the other side of that is
that it necessitates regulation, and we shouldn't lose either side
of the implications. It's the moral implications of that status, it
seems to me, those who hold to that position.
And I will
repeat what I said earlier. It seems to me that the implications of
that status raise issues not simply about time limit 14 days,
informed consent and so forth, but powerful restraints upon
commercialization, both in the production of knowledge and
therapies, which is what I think Rebecca has emphasized, but also in
the distribution of knowledge and therapies, the access to
it.
And that broadens out the whole question of the health
care system in this country, and I know we can't take that on, but
it seems to me when you state regulations, you have to point to
that. How one makes that operational is a very difficult question,
but it seems to me it cannot be ignored in any final statement about
regulations.
I don't think I can carry any farther than the
conversation exchange between Elizabeth and Leon, but I want to
bring into the discussion something that Michael wrote in one of his
memos.
The argument that we may too easily assume that there
are alternative modes of research because there's a difference
between left over embryo research and cloning for biomedical
research, and as I recall in your New York Times op.ed.
article you pointed out that morally really they stand
together.
And if that's the case, if research on leftover
embryos is not essentially different from cloning for medical
research, they stand together or they fall together was, I think,
the point that you made in your statement. Hence, either forbid them
both or do both.
And if you don't say forbid them both, then
maybe you will get faster to the answers to the question of
possibility and necessity that Elizabeth is talking about, if you
see that at least those two forms of research really stand closer
together morally than has been previously assumed by a lot of
us.
CHAIRMAN KASS: Gil.
PROF.
MEILAENDER: I want to try my hand at reinforcing the point
that Mary Ann made because I think it's important.
I preface
that by saying, I mean, in my own ideal world, we would ban research
cloning simply because we would ban cloning. I mean, there's a sense
in which I haven't been happy from the start with the
distinction.
You will remember we had the terminological wars
for a while, and we've kind of arrived at a way of talking about it
that I'm happy to acquiesce in so that we can talk about it even
though it actually distorts to some extent my own view of the
matter, but I mean, we have to talk, after all.
I'd be happy
to have this Council make no policy recommendation. I don't actually
think it's all that important, to be honest, as compared with the
fleshing out of the arguments and the explaining of the rationale in
both moral and policy terms. That would please me all right, too,
although I'm probably a distinct minority on that point.
But,
I mean, there is something to be said for the moratorium language,
and I thought, Frank, you needed to take a little more seriously
Mary Ann's point, that is to say, one way -- and, Michael, it comes
to your point about kind of respecting alternative views. One way of
doing that is that it's conceivable that several people could come
together agreeing on such a recommendation over quite different
reasons, and you wouldn't necessarily be endorsing everybody else's
reasons in doing that.
If I were to support a moratorium, it
would be precisely so that the moral argument can continue. I mean,
I wouldn't really support it so that we can get regulations in
place, since it is, after all, not an activity that I want to
proceed with regulation, but you know, I could have my own
independent reason.
Somebody else might share several
reasons, but I mean, that is a way of trying to take seriously the
concerns and the moral positions of several different people without
setting aside one's own.
I mean, what Mary Ann has pointed to
is an independent kind of reason why it's at least a possible policy
option in my mind, even if, I suppose, in the best of all possible
worlds not the best option as far as I'm
concerned.
CHAIRMAN KASS:
Okay.
PROF. FUKUYAMA: No, I do take very
seriously, you know, Mary Ann's, you know, urge that we need to have
this moral debate, but I can think of no better way of stimulating
that than actually having on the table, you know, concrete
legislation for regulating this area. I mean, that's what drives the
editorial writers and, you know, the think tanks, you know, to
actually talk about some of these issues.
Whereas simply a
moratorium that doesn't actually -- isn't connected to a concrete,
you know, public policy I think risks just sort of continuing. I
mean, debate will continue, but I really -- you know, for example,
the stem cell debate that we had in 2001 was driven by the fact that
there was a timetable for the administration to announce a new stem
cell policy, and that's really what I think got everybody interested
in learning about stem cells and, you know, editorializing and so
forth.
And so I do think, you know, that three would achieve
a lot of that purpose of stimulating, you know, the public
discussion about where we're heading.
CHAIRMAN
KASS: Who do I have next? I have Dan
Foster.
DR. FOSTER: My recollection of the
last meeting, and I just want to make one point about the options of
adult stem cells that I know that seem favorable to many people,
that at the end of the conversation, the discussion -- I haven't
gone back to look at the transcript, but I believe that when -- and
I haven't seen the Nature paper that's supposed to come out,
but I believe that in her discussions she also made the point that
her own laboratory was proceeding in terms of embryonic stem cell
research because of the fact that there needed to be comparisons
between here, and the she herself was not at all sure that the adult
cells were going to do.
So, I mean, one needs to remember
that the leading proponent of adult stem cell herself has said we
need to advance in terms of these other issues.
And unless my
recollection is wrong, I think that she did say that, and I believe
that Gearhart also made the point that both issues need to look --
and they may act differently. You certainly can't -- I don't think
you can compare without comparison. The same thing, if you look at
zygotic embryos from leftover blastocysts, I mean, I have
considerable concern about the rejected blastocyst, about the
long-term storage in terms of freezing, in terms of deterioration
and mutation and those stored blastocysts.
So they need to be
compared with freshly made stem cells if you really want to try to
get the information because they might be worse by far in terms of
any -- but you only know that if you look at it to see.
And
so to have a moratorium in some sense says, just as Elizabeth said,
that you'll never get the information that you want because a
scientist would want to get the facts, and if we can say that adult
stem cells are better or zygotic stem cells are better, then that
would be one thing and we could stop all the other
things.
But, on the other hand, if there's a vast difference,
we have to know that. I mean, the late Bertrand Russell said
something's pretty interesting, I think, and he said the only
definitive information comes from science. Dogma comes from
religion, and in between is the vast no man's land of
philosophy.
What is the evidence? I mean, a scientist would
say you have to have evidence. Now, if you think that the way of
getting the evidence is absolutely reprehensible, as I guess Gil
does, then I would say that he shouldn't modify. I agree with
Michael here. He shouldn't modify his stand, and I would respect him
for that.
He ought to say no. I mean there's some statement
in the document -- I know we're not supposed to say it -- that no
morally unacceptable act can ever be done for any good. I underline
that statement.
So if you've got a sniper on the University
of Texas tower who has killed 27 people because it's morally
unacceptable to kill somebody under any circumstance, then you could
never, you know, do that.
So I would say I don't want -- I
mean, he chastised me on something I said from Augusta in a gentle
way, but let me -- wait a minute. I'm not quite
through.
PROF. MEILAENDER: I'm coming
again.
DR. FOSTER: I'm not quite through,
but I would much prefer you to simply say, I mean, I don't think
this kind of compromise to accomplish a ban like this is really the
sort of honesty that you always have reflected on your
views.
I understand where you stand. I don't agree with it,
but I understand it. So I would much rather have you say, however we
come out of this, I don't want to do this no matter how much good
can come out of it rather than to say I want to vote for a
moratorium so we can get a report out that everybody buys
into.
So two points. One is a scientific point, and the
second has to do with just your remark. I think we ought to honestly
say what we believe here, and whether it's policy or
whatever.
CHAIRMAN KASS: You got him once. I
got him the second time. Go. No, I'm going to be silent. Let Gil
speak.
PROF. MEILAENDER: Just so we're
clear, were I to support a moratorium, I would understand it as
saying no. All right?
It might mean I'd have to persuade you
of that no again four years from now, but that's what I would
understand it as saying.
Frank, I think, would understand it
a little differently. It doesn't mean we wouldn't at a certain level
support the same thing, but that's the way I would understand it,
and it seems to me a plausible
understanding.
CHAIRMAN KASS: Let me make --
I've got a queue of three people and then we'll break for lunch and
return. I've got Bill Hurlbut, Mike Gazzaniga, and I think that's --
I just wrote Mike. That must be you. Yes?
You can wait until
after lunch? Paul? I'm sorry. Did I miss you? Your name is down here
scratched out. Have you not spoken?
Bill Hurlbut, after
lunch? You can see where the priorities of this body. We'll take a
break. We'll reconvene at two o'clock.
(Whereupon, at
12:32 p.m., the meeting was recessed for lunch, to reconvene at 2:00
p.m., the same
day.)
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