The fact that bioscience in general and reproductive bioscience in particular is advancing so quickly begs the issue that the field needs some form of oversight. There is no doubt that completely unfettered bioscience can be a threat to human dignity, if not our identity, as Dr. Leon Kass, the current chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics has suggested. But partisan politics is not the appropriate arena to deal with this problem. In such a setting, any committees formed would invariably become stacked with members of a particular political bent.
It is my belief that if the U.S. Congress were to set up a nonpartisan standing commission like the English HFEA to recommend policy, the U.S. public would be well served. Not only could the current debate about therapeutic cloning be resolved in an intelligent, apolitical, and democratic fashion (there is already consensus against reproductive cloning), but also infertility clinics could be monitored appropriately. It is even conceivable that the related abortion issue could be taken out of politics, to our collective benefit.
Robin Cook, M.D.
March 12, 2003
Naples, Florida
DR. ROBIN COOK
A graduate of Columbia Medical School, finished his postgraduate medical training at Harvard. He is the author of Shock, Abduction, Vector, Toxin, Chromosome 6, Contagion, and numerous other bestselling novels.
