Do Presidential Bioethics Committees Shape Science Policy?

GEN | Analysis & Insight: Do Presidential Bioethics Committees Shape Science Policy?: When President Barack Obama’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues reconvened May 18, the agenda included the Guatemalan governments’ investigations into the intentional infection of people from 1946–48 by the U.S. Public Health Service during research on sexually transmitted diseases. It’s a far cry from the original issue for which the president formed his commission last year—the ethics of synthetic biology research. In taking up the protection of human subjects in clinical trials, the current commission has come full circle, returning to a topic that several of its predecessor panels also grappled with.