Why No Bioethics on the California Proposition 71 Governing Council?

Why doesn't California put a bioethicist on its Proposition 71 governing board dealing with the $3 billion to be allocated for stem cell research? University Chancellors and Presidents are being nominated up and down as schools' and institutes' top guns clamor to be public intellectuals on this big-ticket funding item, no doubt in part to ensure that their shop gets some of the money. The proposition guarantees seats on the board to some institutions (including the 5 UCal schools), but why in the world can't there be some slots dedicated to bioethics?

No matter what your position on stem cell research, there simply must be a dedicated stem cell ethics expert among the governors. If it weren't so serious a matter, one would have to laugh at the idea that these University and institute administrators are properly trained to think about how and whether to dispense the money and for which studies. It is a question several are beginning to ask anew, echoing concerns from those who opposed Prop 71 but themselves supported hES research. Bioethics in California has always been a developing phenomenon, although the Stanford center is arguably among the top programs in the nation. Hopefully at least some of the ballast for deliberations about which programs should be funded will be provided by people in stem cell bioethics in California. But that is a very, very short list of people.

Even more important, California should finally begin to build up some bioethics programs, particularly in the universities that plan to do significant new stem cell research. If the past is any predictor, that will not be easily accomplished in California, where bioethics has just never really taken a foothold in terms of university budgets and powerhouse faculties. There are plenty of good people in bioethics in California, but it is difficult to identify a group of major research centers in bioethics in the state, despite its preeminent place in biotechnology research. Proposition 71 should be the full employment act for California bioethics, to borrow Art Caplan's description of the role ethics money in the Human Genome Project had on bioethics in the 1990s. But if it is business as usual in the most populous state in the nation, bioethics may become an unfunded sport for university CEOs. That would not only hurt bioethics, it would hurt the people of California, who are clearly hoping for a careful, smart use of the $3 billion windfall for stem cells. For them, ethics has to stay in the mix in a serious way.