Given my considerable disapproval of the positions put forward by Leon Kass, not to mention my thoughts on the President's Council on Bioethics and, indeed, bioethics in general, it seems both worth noting and no news at all that Leon Kass has departed the Council. As Ronald Bailey notes over at Hit and Run, it will continue to be business as usual in a council that more or less reflects the reprehensible views of its former chair.
The bottom line: Pellegrino's appointment as chairman of the President's Bioethics Council will, if anything, increase that body's opposition to a lot of biotechnological progress.
Amongst that biotechnological progress is the quest for longer, healthier lives. People like Kass want to use government power to ensure that you and I suffer and die by outlawing the research and use of healthy life extension technologies. That's murder in my book, however you choose to try and justify it, and we must fight to ensure that these despicable ideas gain no more ground.
Technorati tags: bioethics