Capital Report: A New National Bioethics Commission-Maybe

Abstract

On 3 October 1995, President Clinton wanted to show how committed he and his administration were to protecting human subjects in On that day he accepted a report from Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, a national commission that had been looking into allegations that nearly fifty years ago,, at height of Cold War, people had unknowingly participated or had been coerced into participating in government-sponsored experiments on effects of ionizing radiation. Some had, commission concluded, and president felt moved to issue a public apology to all those whose rights may have been violated and promised it would never happen again. To back up his promise, president announced two actions. First, he asked all federal agencies involved in research on human subjects to review current rides for protecting human subjects. Second, he announced his intent to create a National Bioethics Advisory Commission, a fifteen-member body appointed to oversee, among other things, of government-sponsored According to president's 3 October announcement, NBAC (pronounced En-back) will have a broad mandate to examine ethical conduct of biomedical research in U.S. Its first responsibility will be to review adequacy of each federal agency's rules for protection of human subjects. Beyond that, NBAC will advise (1) on the appropriateness of departmental, agency, or other governmental programs, policies, assignments, missions, guidelines, and regulations as they relate to bioethical issues arising from research on human biology and behavior and (2) on including clinical applications, of that research. NBAC is supposed only to identify broad principles, not review specific programs. NBAC's first priority will be to look into management and use of genetic information, as' well as questions raised by patenting of human genes. After it tackles these areas, NBAC can set its own agenda, so long as topics picked are related to biomedical research and public health, relevant to federal government's interest in research, and not covered by another bioethics panel--although latter shouldn't be too big a hurdle since there are virtually no federally chartered bioethics panels around these days. And it's to do all this in just two years. NBAC is slated to go out of business two years from day it formally opens its doors--although that could change if president decides to keep it around longer. …