"This transcript has not been edited or corrected, but rather appears as received from the commercial transcribing service. Accordingly, the President's Council on Bioethics makes no representation as to its accuracy."
FIRST MEETING
Friday, January 18, 2002
Closing Remarks
CHAIRMAN KASS: Let us spend
just a couple of minutes, we actually are a few minutes earlier than adjournment,
but we, I think, should at least speak a bit about our future plans, and
truth to tell, it was a difficult enough task in short order to get this
meeting organized that certain questions about the future have been left
in abeyance until now.
Members of Council should have received, I hope all of you did receive,
a series of provisional dates asking you to hold those for possible subsequent
meetings. The advertisement for the frequency of meetings of this Council
was we would meet 6 or 7 times a year, roughly, and that would mean spacing
things out; following that, if you simply did it slavishly, we meet next
in March. But I would like to propose that we, in fact, have a meeting
in February. And the reason for doing that, I think, is that we have really
opened things up here. The conversation--
I will simply speak for myself. I have really been delighted with the
seriousness and the thoughtfulness of the exchange. There are differences
of opinion in here, probably deep differences of opinion, but I have the
sense that there is the making of good will for collegial exploration,
and that it would be a shame not to take advantage of this momentum, and
to move the conversation forward.
I do not think that there has to be a lot of new paper prepared by the
staff. And I have said it before, but it should be said again, the staff
did super-human work to produce these papers in two weeks. Multiple drafting,
and sessions with the minimum kind of equipment making it possible. And
we can revise certain sorts of things, but I will not promise any additional
staff papers. We will have the Academy report distributed. I hope we can
get someone from the Academy to come.
In the light of materials we receive from you, we can structure the agenda
so that we can actually bite the bullet on some of these questions. I
do not mean closure, but focus in on some of the things that we have opened
up, skirted around, come back to.
The original dates scheduled in February-- Let me say, generally I think
we should meet Thursdays and Fridays, and people who are planning their
academic calendar for next year would like to know that. So that would
be helpful down the road. And except for the February meeting, all the
other spring dates we proposed were Thursday and Friday, in fact.
It turns out that we made a change for the February-- The original dates
for the February meeting were 12th and 13th, but it turns out that I notice
that three or four members of Council are appearing in Washington for
another event on the 12th, and I think Dr. Rowley is-- Janet, you are
going to be around also. Rather than make people go away, or hang around
an extra day, I would like to propose that we meet Wednesday and Thursday
of that week, the 13th and 14th of February. There are a number of you
who are already here, and it will, I think, save travel time.
I apologize to those of you who are going to be inconvenienced, or who
cannot make it. I wish we could have had clear notice. The original thought
was we could not possibly produce new materials for you in two weeks to
send out for a February meeting. But I think we can revisit these materials
with profit. We can highlight for you, or you can help us highlight for
one another, for ourselves, which parts of these documents, and what supplementary
materials we need to read and look at.
So, if that is all right-- I guess the other way to do this would be to
go around the room and find out when there is a good date, but let me
do this by authority from the Chair, and apologize to those for whom that
is going to be a big burden. Please.
PROF. CARTER: So,
we should assume the same basic format, starting the morning of the 13th
and running a day and a half?
CHAIRMAN KASS: Let me see.
The people who are in here on the 12th for meetings, you, Jim Wilson,
Robbie George. Janet, you are in on Tuesday? All day.
DR. ROWLEY:: I would
be finished two or three in the afternoon.
CHAIRMAN KASS: On Tuesday.
Well, other people are busy until about three. Am I right? I think it
is foolish to try to start something Tuesday afternoon. We will begin
early on Wednesday, and work through until midday on Thursday. Is that
all right?
Other comments, perorations, warnings? Suggestions, by the way, not just
about the substance but about the procedure are welcome. They will not
necessarily all be followed because they might conflict with one another,
but I would like to hear from you about the way these meetings could be
run to greater advantage as we go along.
I apologize for the crush yesterday. We worked ourselves pretty hard with
few breaks, and maybe the conversation in the afternoon flagged some,
but I thought that with a night's sleep, today was very fine, and I look
forward to the next.
Robbie, did you have something?
PROF. GEORGE: Yes.
I was just thinking, it would not be a matter of the staff preparing more
original paper, but if people were interested in pursuing, as I would
like to do at some point to offer rebuttal of Michael's argument about
the brain and brain life, the staff could simply reproduce materials that
are written out there, and circulate them.
CHAIRMAN KASS: Oh, absolutely.
Anything that is going to be produced. I mean, I want to hear from as
many of you as possible, as have things that you would like to contribute
of substance. And you could indicate whether you want-- I trust you will
want this shared. Maybe something is simply for private communication,
though it is a matter of public record if you submit it under the Freedom
of Information Act. I trust that most of the things you would want to
send to the Chair, you would want to send to all our colleagues. And you
can either send it directly, or we can send it out centrally. But written
materials, a page, two pages, five pages, whatever you produce, we will
circulate. And depending upon the volume, we will produce some kind of
an agenda, organize those topics for discussion, so that we can proceed
fruitfully.
I do think that we have to proceed on several tracks at the same time,
and one is to continue the arguments, and try to develop a mode of presentation
of the discussion on reproductive cloning. Some people think it is a dead
question; others are not so sure. How we choose to talk about it is itself,
I think, an important issue not yet resolved.
And we want, I think, to consider the legislative alternatives which includes
the no-legislation alternative. And loathe though some of you are to be
thinking in those terms, I exhort you to try, because it is part of our
business to take that up. And we will have a fuller discussion of the
issue of cloning that does not lead to reproduction as a central part
of this meeting.
Stephen, and then I have one more comment, and then we will break.
PROF. CARTER: Should
we then make any assumptions one way or the other about the other proposed
spring meeting dates that were circulated?
CHAIRMAN KASS: Oh, yes.
Let's think in these terms. I thought we probably-- I mean, it may turn
out to be wrong, but I thought before this meeting we might skip February
and meet January, March, April and May, hoping to have something reasonably
good written toward the end of the spring. But I think maybe we should
think in terms of January, February, March, and May, and leave the time
between March and May for a fair amount of drafting and writing to be
circulated, subject to change. Do not give away those dates, please. But
let's make that the working operation.
I know it is a lot to ask of people, and many of you are vastly overextended,
and the gift of your time is precious to us, and I do not want to abuse
it. I am even loathe to call a meeting sooner than two months, but I think
the subject matter, and the group process, demand it. So, with your indulgence,
let's do that.
One final word. I think the difficulty here, just to reiterate, we do
have very powerful moral goods, and not just interests, that are at stake
in this discussion. The progress of science is not a morally neutral good,
and certainly, the relief of human suffering and the cure of disease is
a moral calling, and a high moral good, and I do not think there is anybody
in the room, even if they wanted to ban cloning at the base, would dispute
that.
There are other powerful moral goods that enter into our deliberations,
and the trick is going to be to find both the rich enough language to
describe those, so that even if we trample some of them, we are aware
of what they are, to describe these things in full. And that was part
of the meaning of the point of departure yesterday, philosophical, and
somewhat amorphous, and difficult to talk about as it was.
It seems to me that when and if we make recommendations, and perhaps even
conflicting recommendations on the policy side, it would be very helpful
to the policy makers to understand as fully as we can help them to understand,
the full meaning, and the full costs of doing whichever thing that they
do. And that is a task for us. Not simply to speak in terms of the names
of the goods which we privately defend, whether it be the life of the
embryo, or the good of medical research, but to take upon ourselves individually
the burden of speaking to the concerns of the others in this room, and
to see whether one can somehow acknowledge and accommodate it, and learn
how to grapple with it for ourselves so that we finally own all of the
positions around the table, including the ones for which we would personally
come down.
I do not think anybody has argued in this room for anything that did not
have weight. And that means that however one comes down on this question,
it is important for each of us to be able to acknowledge in our own thinking,
and in the arguments that we put forth, the weight of the other considerations.
I think that is both judicious, and I think a real public service in a
climate, and in a town, if I may say so, where it is just winners and
losers, and you do not really have to respect the deeply held considerations
of the other side.
If we can present a kind of model moral political deliberation that does
that, I think we would have made a real contribution, at least to those
who would care to pay attention, and I hope there will be quite a number.
Thank you very much for two wonderful days, and bless you for doing it.
The meeting is adjourned.
(Whereupon, at 12:53 p.m., the meeting was adjourned.)
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