In April, President Barack Obama named 11 more members to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. They will join commission chair Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania, and commission vice-chair James Wagner, Emory University president, who were appointed last year. The new commission replaces the controversial President's Council on Bioethics set up by President George W. Bush in 2001, which contained several members of the pro-life lobby.

The 13 newly appointed commissioners are not preponderantly “professional bioethicists” but rather come from other fields “at the intersection of science, technology and ethics” (Table 1). Part of the idea with this departure from mainstream bioethicists is to reach beyond biology and medicine to involve those working with “hardware, software and related technologies such as robotics,” officials say. The president's new panel is expected to react rapidly and provide practical guidance, a radical departure from the Bush-era commission, which favored discussion and was often accused of producing reports with ideological leanings.

Table 1 Who's who—new bioethics appointees
Full size table

Obama's commission differs from the Bush council in several ways. First, the new commission is lean, with only 13 members to “keep the group nimble and facilitate discussion and consensus building.”

Second, its members are asked not to engage in “arcane philosophical discussions” but to provide the president and administration with practical, policy-oriented, ethics-based recommendations. For that reason, the commission includes several insiders who work for federal agencies, a shift that is meant to keep discussions and advice from straying outside “the complex framework of federal policymaking processes and procedures.”