March 28, 2024

Sacked scientist campaigns for unbiases US science policy

A scientist sacked from the President’s Council on Bioethics and a serving member of the Council have published a sharp critique of George Bush’s science policy. Writing in the journal PLoS Biology, Elizabeth Blackburn, an Australian, and Janet Rowley, both biologists, have complained that the Council’s recent reports underestimated the therapeutic potential of embryonic stem cell research and distorted the motivations of scientists studying ageing. “There is always this strong implication [in the reports] that medical research is not what God intended, that there is something unnatural about it,” Dr Blackburn told the Boston Globe. “We had a great many comments on the report, and they would just make a little changes that didn’t fully address them.”