Ethics of stem cell research front and center: Leon Kass speaks about life, cloning

Harvard Gazette

October 28, 2005

A top Bush bioethics adviser kicked off a new series of discussions about the ethics of stem cell and other scientific research on Thursday (Oct. 20), tangling with Harvard faculty members over the meaning of life and of family, and over the limits that society ought to impose on itself.

The discussion, at times brutally frank, centered on reproductive cloning, a procedure most within the scientific community firmly oppose and against which Harvard University has taken an official stand. Leon Kass, chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001 to 2005, presented a chapter of his 2002 book, “Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics,” to the group, gathered for the lunchtime event in the Barker Center’s Thompson Room.

[more]