[I thought that this would be of interest to MOJ readers. I've reprinted the whole piece--from today's online Chronicle of Higher Education--because one has to be a subscriber to access the item.]
National Academies Report Recommends New Oversight Boards and Tighter Rules for Stem-Cell Research
By JEFFREY BRAINARD
Universities and research institutions should set up a new kind of
in-house oversight committee to approve and manage studies using human
embryonic stem cells, a National Academies panel recommended on
Tuesday. In a report, the panel also suggested guidelines for the
ethical conduct of the research that are stricter than existing
government rules.
The report,
"Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research," says the new
oversight committees would provide an additional level of review beyond
the monitoring done by other university committees, like institutional
review boards. The panel said that the new committees would ensure that
the controversial studies were conducted in a uniform and transparent
way, and thus would help build public confidence in them.
For example, the panel assumed that university researchers
would continue to create new colonies, or lines, of human embryonic
stem cells. The practice remains controversial because scientists must
destroy early-stage embryos to obtain the cells, and some people
consider the embryos to be human lives. The panel said that out of
respect for those ethical concerns, the new oversight committees should
not allow researchers to destroy embryos that are older than 14 days.
The proposed guidelines would require that researchers obtain informed
consent from all donors of eggs and sperm used to make embryos used in
studies -- including from anonymous sperm donors, which is not now
required.
"While we were hesitant to recommend another bureaucratic
oversight entity, the burden in this case is justified, given the novel
and controversial nature of embryonic-stem-cell research," Jonathan D.
Moreno, a professor of biomedical ethics at the University of Virginia
and co-chairman of the academies' panel, said in a written statement.
The panel prescribed the changes in response to a "perception"
that the research "is unregulated," the report says. Scientists now
face a patchwork of federal and state regulations covering stem-cell
studies, and many of the rules "were not designed with this research
specifically in mind, and there are gaps in how well they cover" the
research.
What's more, President Bush decided in 2001 that scientists
could receive federal research funds for such studies only if they used
stem-cell lines that existed at the time. As a result, a growing number
of universities are moving toward using private or state funds to study
newer lines of stem cells that, researchers say, appear to be more
scientifically promising. Some observers have worried that the trend
will reinforce the variation across states.
Supporters of stem-cell research hope that the panel's report
will play a role in helping to relax Mr. Bush's limits, although the
panel itself did not recommend such a step. Even with private and state
money flowing into the field, advocates say, the research will move
forward more rapidly with federal funds.
"Leading institutions engaged in stem-cell research have many
of the protections recommended ... already in place," said Daniel P.
Perry, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical
Research, a consortium of universities and other groups that supports
the studies. "They need only a more supportive and positive federal
environment to make the research flourish. The strong ethical standards
in this timely report should give Congressional champions of research
even more support to expand the current federal stem-cell policy, and
should give those who are still waiting on the sidelines a reason to
get in the game."
While the report urges universities to adopt the guidelines
voluntarily, it also suggests that agencies providing research funds
and academic publishers push universities to observe them as a
condition of receiving the funds and getting papers published.
The new review boards would consider a variety of issues. They
would oversee steps to protect the privacy of parents who donated
embryos, sperm, or eggs used in the research. Most stem-cell lines have
been created from excess embryos left over from fertility clinics.
In addition, the proposed guidelines would prohibit researchers
from paying donors of sperm and eggs used to create embryos. Women who
donate eggs for reproductive purposes usually are paid, to reflect the
heightened risks associated with the medical procedure to harvest the
eggs. But some people view payments as an inappropriate inducement, the
panel said.
"The sensitivities surrounding this research are significant,
and we thought it was better to err on the side of caution," Richard O.
Hynes, a professor of biology and co-chairman of the academies' panel,
said at a news conference on Tuesday.
The stem-cell committees would also review all work to create
new lines of stem cells and would require scientists to explain why
doing so would advance the research.
The committees would also approve any proposal to transplant
human embryonic stem cells into animals. Scientists use the technique
to study how the human cells grow and function in living systems, and
they hope to learn how to use the cells to develop new medical
treatments for diseased and ailing organs in human beings. Stem cells
are undifferentiated building blocks capable of developing into any
specialized cell in the adult body.
In addition, the panel recommended that the university
oversight committees bar research to implant human stem cells into
early-stage embryos of monkeys. The report said this would avoid the
unwanted, but unlikely, result that the human cells would endow the
animals with human-like mental capacities. The boards should carefully
monitor transplants of the cells into animals of other species, the
panel said.
_________________________
Michael P.
Mike C. has written a very thoughtful post arguing that the Church should exercise it prudential judgment and not condone (or even turn a blind eye to) condom use as a means to fight AIDS.
He has also challenged Rick and coach K to join the ACC basketballblog.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
For more about Senator Frist, the filibustering of President Bush's judicial nominees, and religious faith (see here and here), there are a number of interesting posts by Bainbridge, Volokh, "Non-Volokh," Solum, and many others either available, or linked to, here and here.
Rick
Another correspondent takes a break from studying for exams and writes, in response to my question "about the place of a law school in a university, particularly in a Catholic university that aspires to be 'great'":
The correspondent whom you have already posted makes good points and I agree with them. I would add to them at least two points:
1) Catholics disproportionately tend to enter into "professional" programs after graduation, rather than, say, PhD programs (at least the statistics used to say so). Thus, there ought to be top flight JD & MBA programs at Catholic universities because we know that this is where our students are headed and we ought to provide a Catholic context for those pursuits; this in particular because of . . .
2) The Universal Call to Holiness. "The followers of Christ, called by God not for what they had done but by his design and grace, and justified in the Lord Jesus, have been made sons and daughters of God by the Baptism of faith and partakers of the divine nature, and so are truly sanctified. They must therefore hold on to and perfect in their lives that holiness which they have received from God." (LG 40) "The forms and tasks of life are many but there is one holiness, which is cultivated bay all who are led by God's Spirit and, obeying the Father's voice and adoring God the Father in spirit and in truth, follow Christ, poor and humble in carrying his cross, that they may deserve to be sharers in his glory. All however, according to their own gifts and duties must steadfastly advance along the way of a living faith, which arouses hope and works through love." (LG 41) These words of Lumen Gentium suggest that the Christian life is meant to be lived, of course, not merely or even primarily within the walls of the chapel or church. Rather, the sacred mysteries we celebrate their, while the summit of our communion in Christ, are also meant to be the source of our Christian living. When we gather in prayer we arrive as Christians and leave as Christians. And therefore Christians we must be in the say, 100 hours of work in a tough week at Cravath, Swaine, and Moore. Indeed, if we find there to be an irreconcilable conflict between our work and our Christianity, we must be prepared to make the courageous choice to reform or abandon the former in order to cling to the latter. Lawyers, however unfairly derided en masse as a professional class, do certainly face extraordinary pressures and temptations to choose the expedient over the virtuous.
And this is so not simply in the well known ethical dilemmas that are the stuff of legal ethics curricula and debates. Much more fundamentally, the role of lawyers and law in society should be pondered at Catholic schools, shaped by Catholic lawyers in their work, and ultimately therefore sanctified by the presence of the Church, and so many of her best and brightest, in this profession.
Rick
Mike S. posts a link to a post by a blogger who "doesn't understand [his] logic" regarding the Church, condoms, and AIDS. Of course, a quick trip to that blogger's site will uncover a irrefutable reason why neither Mike nor anyone else need worry about that blogger's lack of understanding. No one should lose sleep over the complaints of a blogger who links approvingly to a Maryland Terps fan-site, to a pathetic post called "The Anti-Duke Manifesto."
Rick
p.s.: I'm just kidding. (Well, not really.)
p.p.s. Coach K is, remember, Catholic. That's the only reason -- really -- I raise this issue here at Mirror of Justice.
Mike C. says that he doesn't understand my logic in my post entitled The Church, Condoms, and AIDS. I posted my response as a comment on his blog.
Dear Mirror of Justice bloggers and readers,
I am a professor at Duquesne University School of Law.
Our Law School, together with the Wecht Institute for Law and Forensic Science, will be holding a conference entitled "Justice for All" in November 2005. Given the nature of the Wecht Institute and its emphasis on forensics, a large part of the conference will be devoted to forensic science and its use in relation to the "Justice for All" act.
However, the conference will also include a separate component on religious, moral and ethical reflections on the death penalty and the law.
Since Duquesne is a Catholic university, we are very interested in Catholic scholarship in this area, but we also welcome and encourage contributions from other faith traditions. If you are interested in learning more about the conference or making a presentation about the conference, please feel free to contact me at [email protected] or to telephone me at 412-396-4994.
Alison Sulentic
I asked, a few days ago, "about the place of a law school in a university, particularly in a Catholic university that aspires to be 'great.'" Here is a very interesting "take" -- to which I would welcome responses -- from an MOJ reader:
Apropos your question about the role of a law school in a great Catholic university, I'd have the following observations:
1. [Some other Catholic universities] decided that it was enough to have a law school that aped secular models and had nothing distinctively Catholic about it. . . . They were content first to provide an avenue of social mobility for the children of the immigrant Church, and later to compete with purely secular law schools on purely secular terms for prestige.
2. This underestimated the importance of law in both public life and intellectual life in the US, where for many reasons it has played an unusually influential role. Law has almost always been the field (or crucible) in which conflicts over Catholic values and perspectives have been played out, from the 19th C battles over education and the status of the Church and Catholics in a hostile environment, to the current culture wars over abortion, sexuality, the family, the nature of the human person and bioethics. To the extent the Church (and the great Catholic university) wants to influence those debates -- or understand them for their own purposes -- there should be Catholic law schools. Also, to the extent the great Catholic university concieves of itself as a place where Catholics can talk to each other critically about the Church and its teachings, and as a countercultural force that can address society critically, it must be able to "talk law", because the focus of criticism will often be the law as an expression of values and a conception of the human person.
3. A great Catholic university thus must have a great Catholic law school: one with plenty of faculty grounded in the Tradition, convinced that their Catholic faith is relevant to the way they think about law, able to imagine connections across the spectrum of law and not just the law of Church and State and the obvious hot button issues such as abortion, and able to integrate their faith into their teaching and scholarship. . . .
4. A great Catholic university seeks to engage in the moral formation of its undergraduates, using the solid platform of Catholic faith and thought as a way of countering the moral skepticism, relativism and indifference that is the conventional ideology of higher ed today. That task is even more urgent in law (and other professional) schools where we are turning out people with great power and responsibilities and no moral touchstones other than a devotion to craft and their ambitions, restrained only by minimalist, rule-bound professional "ethics." Catholic law schools can have the moral framework and confidence to produce very different kinds of lawyers. The Catholic university that makes that happen is indeed doing something great.
5. The Catholic law school an make a Catholic university greater by providing a real (and not made up or forced) locus for genuinely interdisciplinary work. . . . Think of how . . . theological anthropology influences fundamental jurisprudence, moral theology influences the law of bioethics, and Catholic sociual thought influences understanding of everything from immigration law to corporate law. The Catholic law school can be where all olf these strains of Catholic thought can come together in imaginative ways.
Hope this is a helpful answer to your excellent question . . . .
Thoughts?
UPDATE: Here is a reaction from "Midwestern Mugwump."
