Washington

Elizabeth Blackburn: thinks her critical approach led to removal. Credit: D. POWERS/UCSF

An eminent cell biologist has been dropped from the US president's Council on Bioethics after publicly criticizing the administration's stance on stem-cell research.

Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco, has been told that her two-year term will not be renewed. Three members, including a political scientist, have been added to the council.

Blackburn — discoverer of the enzyme telomerase, which plays an important role in ageing — had disagreed with the council's chairman Leon Kass on issues such as human embryonic stem-cell research, which she supports. She has also claimed that parts of the council's reports on stem-cell research and reproductive technologies have misrepresented scientific facts.

Blackburn says that the online journal PLoS is about to publish a letter detailing her concerns. She thinks she was removed from the panel because of public disagreements with Kass and the US president George Bush. “I cannot think of any other possible reason,” she says.

Critics of the Bush administration interpreted Blackburn's removal as the latest example of a tendency to fill advisory panels with members who support the administration's positions. On 18 February, the Union of Concerned Scientists alleged that such activities are undermining the administration's decision-making by distorting scientific information (see Nature 427, 663; 2004).

The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), which represents US biomedical researchers, says that it is “extremely concerned” about Blackburn's removal.

“This decision undercuts the panel's capacity to make recommendations based on the highest quality of information and a broad spectrum of viewpoints,” FASEB president Robert Wells wrote in a letter sent to Bush on 1 March.

Kass, a bioethicist at the University of Chicago, says that Blackburn was not removed for her political views, but he declines to elaborate.

“We have people on the council who disagree with the president,” Kass says. “He wants diverse opinions and he's got them.”