Defending Kass but Confirming the Conflict

March 18th, 2005

Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.

On Tech Central Station James Q. Wilson, a member of the Prsident’s Council on Bioethics, has a response to Iain Murray’s TCS essay that criticized Leon Kass for advancing “political strategy aimed at achieving certain policy goals [that] renders his position as an honest broker on the issue untenable.” Wilson’s defense of Kass simply dodges the central issue and in the process implicitly confirms the impropriety of Kass simultaneous trying to serve as honest broker and lobbyist. (For background on our discussion of see this post and this post.)

Wilson writes that the Bioethics Council works hard to consider and present a wide range of views, “I have never encountered a more fair-minded chairman than Kass nor a Council composed of so many truly gifted (though philosophically divided) Council members… Try to think of another presidential council that has ever reflected such a wide range of views and expressed them with such clarity. Typically, a presidential body gets its marching orders from the White House and is composed of people whom one can predict will respond to those expectations.” This is certainly wonderful to hear but does not speak to Kass’ role in advancing a legislative agenda while serving as the Council’s chair.

On Kass’ role lobbying Congress for a particular set of policies, Wilson somewhat disingenuously characterizes Kass’ actions as normal scholarly activity, “It is especially unfair to say that Kass suffers from a conflict of interest. The charge seems to rest on a press account that Kass will work with a writer to publish some new arguments in a respectable journal.” Wilson’s interpretation of Kass’ activities is contrary to Kass’ own characterization of his activities in the Washington Post article that Wilson cites:


“Frustrated by Congress’s failure to ban human cloning or place even modest limits on human embryo research, a group of influential conservatives have drafted a broad “bioethics agenda” for President Bush’s second term and have begun the delicate task of building a political coalition to support it… “We have lost much ground,” states the document, which congressional aides said Kass has been championing in meetings on the Hill… Kass emphasized yesterday that his effort to craft a new legislative agenda on cloning, stem cells and related issues was independent of his role as chairman of Bush’s bioethics council and that no federal resources have been used by the group, which he said has no name.”

Wilson then says, somewhat bizarrely, “[Murray’s] criticism is akin to demanding that judges never give speeches or write articles because somehow their independence will be jeopardized. If one employed that argument when one was selecting a chairman, one would have to recruit a philosophical eunuch who had managed to keep all thoughts to himself. But who would hire such a cipher? (All right, there is Justice David Souter, but apart from him . . .?)” We encourage you to have a look for yourself at Kass’ ”journal article”, which is titled, “Bioethics for the Second Term: Legislative Recommendations.” It will be exciting to see what “respected journal” publishes this “article.” Wilson also makes the fatuous assertion that, “There is literally no truth in the argument that Kass’s own views were “more likely to get a hearing than those of other well-qualified bioethicists.”” This would seem to be contradicted by the fact that both the Washington Post and Science magazine both reported on Kass’ legislative agenda, and did not report on the legislative agenda of anyone else. Does Wilson really think that people are dumb enough to fall for this sort of argument by smoke and mirrors?

The fact that Wilson has sought to provide a defense of Kass but either was unable or unwilling to address the central issue of Kass’ conflict of interest says to me that in preparing his defense of Kass, Wilson must have decided that there is not an effective or acceptable case to be made for Kass to wear two hats at the same time.

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