Will Trump administration follow tradition and create a bioethics commission?

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Beginning with the National Commission in 1974 to the current Presidential Commission, every presidential administration save that of George H.W. Bush has had [a presidentially-appointed commission for bioethics].

Will some issue emerge that will stimulate the Trump administration to create a bioethics body? Or, (less likely), will the administration decide to create one at the outset without a particular trigger?

Among the senior members of the president-elect’s circle, Ben Carson, often mentioned as a potential Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, is the only one who has a special interest in bioethics. Not only does he profess a strong pro-life orientation, he was a member of President Bush’s bioethics council….

A number of experiments involving human reproductive material could stimulate a reaction from the new administration, especially if Carson is in charge of that policy territory.

But there are also hints that the incoming administration has an even less regulatory attitude than the last Republican presidency, and the bulk of gene editing applications are in agriculture, not in human reproduction.

How this plays out will depend in part on whether the early hints of a deregulatory orientation to government extend into the ethics of the life sciences.

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: A Trump Bioethics Commission?

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