A Kass Act: The chairman of the bioethics council steps down

Wesley J. Smith

October 10, 2005

LEON KASS HAS STEPPED DOWN as chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics. On one level, I am happy for Kass. For four years he has broiled in the pressure cooker of Washington politics, subjected to vituperation and vicious calumny from the bioethics and science establishments for his heterodox (to them) defense of the intrinsic dignity and importance of human life. For Kass, who will remain a member of the council under the leadership of the bioethicist Edmund Pellegrino, it will no doubt be a relief to step out of the klieg lights of public controversy to focus on his scholarship and family. [more]