Presentation - Stuart Newman

Presentation - Stuart Newman

 

Experience with the Institute for Biotechnology and the Human Future

Stuart A. Newman
New York Medical College
Valhalla, NY 10595

In 2004 the legal scholar Lori Andrews and the bioethicist and technology analyst Nigel M. de S. Cameron invited a group of academics and activists to serve as Fellows of a new organization: the Institute for Biotechnology and the Human Future (IBHF), housed in Andrews’ home institution, the Chicago-Kent Law School of the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. In conjunction with the founding of the IBHF, Cameron had been appointed university research professor of bioethics, with primary responsibilities in developing its programs. The Institute’s charge was to “offer assessments of the scientific benefits and risks of new developments in biotechnology in light of their cultural and ethical significance.”

By 2008, the organization wound down its activities as the two founders turned their attention to other projects. The Fellows [1] and Affiliated Scholars [2], who were deliberately drawn from across the ideological spectrum, then included political liberals, radicals, conservatives and ultraconservatives, atheists, agnostics, and religious believers from the left and right.

During this period, key developments that were receiving wide discussion included

  • human embryonic stem (ES) cells
  • cloning (as a technique for generation of patient-customized ES cells)
  • human-animal chimerism (for producing reparative tissues)
  • the contemporary U.S. biopolitical landscape (the Bush administration’s ban on Federal funds for generation of new human ES cell lines; the Prop. 71 initiative in California to circumvent the Federal ban)

For those concerned about both biomedical advances and humane values, abortion rights was the most incendiary issue of the day. Nonetheless, the ground rule of the IBHF, decreed by its founders, was that “abortion is off the table.” This pertained to discussions at periodic Fellows meetings, at workshops the Institute organized on specific issues, including germ line modification and eugenics, and on the articles, commentaries and position papers posted to its website.

This talk described the experiences of the speaker, an IBHF Fellow, in attempts to promote a progressive agenda on potential human applications of biotechnologies, in the process of pursuing common causes with political adversaries, and in intellectual encounters with alternative frameworks and ideologies.

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1) IBHF Fellows were: George Annas, Adrienne Asch, Brent Blackwelder, Paige Comstock Cunningham, Marsha Darling, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Kevin FitzGerald, Debra Greenfield, Amy Laura Hall, Jaydee Hanson, C. Christopher Hook, Douglas Hunt, William B. Hurlbut, Andrew Kimbrell, Abby Lippman, Michele Mekel, C. Ben Mitchell, M. Ellen Mitchell, Stuart A. Newman, Judy Norsigian, David Prentice and Charles Rubin.

2) IBHF Affiliated Scholars were: Sheri Alpert, Diane Beeson, Nanette Elster, Rosario Isasi, Henk Jochemsen, Christina Bieber Lake, Katrina Sifferd, Tina Stevens and Brent Waters.