Bloggers have a curious relationship with the media. When we find a story that we disagree with we ruthlessly fact-check every statement in order to find weaknesses. When we agree with the story, though, we never think to second guess the accuracy of what we’re being told.
When I first heard the claims that Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn had been removed from the President’s Council on Bioethics for political reasons I became suspicious. I'd been in the process of reading the council reports and meeting transcripts when the story broke and the facts didn’t fit correspond with Blackburn’s claims (I wrote several posts (1, 2, 3) documenting the discrepancies).
Numerous bloggers, however, jumped on the story as evidence that Council chairman Leon Kass was 'stacking the deck" with like-minded cronies. No one, it seemed, found it necessary to check to see if it were true. No one, it appears, except for Farhad Manjoo, a staff writer for Salon.com. In a recent article in which he criticizes Bush’s policies, Mr. Manjoo took the time to clear the problems with Blackburn’s claims:
To critics of the Bush administration, Blackburn's analysis of the situation sounded unimpeachable. George W. Bush's unhappy relationship with science has been well documented. Indeed, just a week before Blackburn was let go, 60 prominent scientists -- including 20 Nobel laureates -- accused the president of routinely mangling scientific fact in the service of "partisan political ends." So just about everyone concluded that Elizabeth Blackburn was the latest victim of the Bush administration's partisan attacks on science. The story line was simple and compelling: Blackburn was a proponent of embryonic stem cell research, while Bush -- and his most ardent supporters -- was not. During a campaign stop shortly after Blackburn's dismissal, likely Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry told reporters, "A scientific panel ought to be chosen on the basis of science and on the basis of reputation, not politics."
The problem is that this simple story line is almost certainly wrong. Interviews with several members of the council -- including its chairman, University of Chicago ethicist Leon Kass -- and, more important, a review of its meetings and reports on stem cell research show Blackburn's charges of partisanship to be weak. It's not at all clear that Blackburn was dismissed for her views, rather than for her performance on the council (she was, for starters, serially absent from meetings, missing about half, more than any other member). And the council's reports -- particularly its lengthy inquiry into stem cell research, which the council released in January -- bear none of the biases she has accused the council of harboring.
The reshuffling of the President's Council on Bioethics is probably not, in other words, just another in a long line of Bush's scientific misdeeds. The real story of the bioethics council, the one that's been lost in the hail of political accusations, is that it has done some fascinating and admirable work -- and rather than letting the president off the hook, the council's report on stem cell research actually highlights the unsustainability of Bush's policy.
Perhaps now, some of the bloggers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9) who believed the claims will take the time to check the evidence and find that they were duped. Perhaps they will even apologize and provide a correction. Perhaps they will show that they have a modicum of integrity.
Perhaps. But I won’t be holding my breath.
From a purely constitutional perspective, I fail to see why the council even exists. The Congress doesn't have the authority technically to authorize either the funding of or banning of any of this research. Research is not commerce. Commerce is the buying and selling of goods and services.
Once again, your detective work is an invaluable service. Thanks again. One result of your indefatigable work is that I have less reason to despair about these matters. It would be nice, though, if people actually got around to talking about the contents, discussions, and arguments of the Council's Reports, instead of fictions of their (sometimes,perfervid) imaginations.
Mike,
Congress didn't authorize the creation of, or appropriate money for the Council. It was created by the Administration as an advisory body (just like the National Council on Bioethics was for Clinton) and its $3m budget is from a reshuffling of available monies at the Department of Health and Human Services. The Administration has many advisory bodies for everything from budgeting to patenting to national defense. This one just has a higher profile than most.
Daniel,
My point is that the number of situations in which its advisories could be constitutional are so few as to make it almost superfilous. Brownback's proposed ban is unconstitutional, but it's too inconvenient to do it the right way which is at the state level. Once again the federalism demon is a nuisance.
I personally don't support federal subsidies on anything that isn't directly related to core federal activities. I don't mind subsidizing military research, but I think medical research should be purely private.
I maintain that regardless of whether you or anyone else likes it, that the states are free to allow this biotech research and a federal ban is illegal. Even a moratorium is illegal.