More on ethics guidelines on stem cell research

Just noticed that the Hinxton panel that decided to come to a consensus on what to do with human embryos, but ignored the very nature of human embryos themselves, included Julian Savulescu. The Oxford ethics professor is the author of a piece in the British Medical Journal (sorry, subscription only) in which he stated that,

Values are important parts of our lives. But values and conscience have different roles in public and private life. They should influence discussion on what kind of health system to deliver. But they should not influence the care an individual doctor offers to his or her patient. The door to “value-driven medicine” is a door to a Pandora’s box of idiosyncratic, bigoted, discriminatory medicine. Public servants must act in the public interest, not their own.

There’s more quoted at blog.bioethics.net.
Salvulescu is also the author of this opinion piece, which makes a case for gender selection by abortion.

I’m happy to report that most of the letters in response to the BMJ article condemned the logic as well as the conclusions of Savulescu. But, this is not a man that I want making any sort of decisions about ethics, much less telling entire nations how to settle law.

There were a couple of edits: I couldn’t seem to spell the professor’s name correctly. Maybe that’s a defect that he would appreciate, maybe not:

Genetic tests should be offered to couples seeking to have a child to allow them to select the child, of the possible children they could have, who will start life with the best opportunity of having the best life (subject to cost constraints)