Besides packing the Presidential Council on Bioethics (PCBE) with Catholics, Bush may also be packing it with people with ties to creationism.

In researching the attempts by Discovery Institute (DI) members to sneak their BS into scientific journals, I found something interesting. One DI author in particular, Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the DI, can be tied to other members of the the PCBE. The link is in a journals published by a right-wing anti-science think tank called "First Things" published by The Institute of Religion and Public Life. Smith has written several articles using his brand of religion disguised as bioethics for "First Things", as have members of the PCBE including its former chair, that crackpot Leon Kass. In particular Gilbert C. Meilaender (a professor of Christian ethics at Valparaiso) has written for "first things."

So, who else thinks that it's fucked up everyone on Bush's committee has more ties to religion than they do to science, as if believing in an imaginary man in the sky in any way informs you on ethical behavior (doesn't seem to prevent Mosques or abortion clinics from getting bombed). And that at least two members of Bush's PCBE have had publications in this BS magazine, sharing space with creationists (Wesley Smith) from the DI?

What we end up with is ethics based on the non-scientific idea that life begins at conception. Life doesn't begin when people are born. From a scientific standpoint the discussion is ludicrous and inappropriate. Life began about 3.5 billion years ago and has not stopped since. When an embryo is conceived, a living sperm and a living egg join together to form a living embryo. Life doesn't "begin" in this situation, it merely continues.

What these jackasses are talking about is "ensoulment" of the embryo, and based on their religion, demanding that scientists treat all embryos as ensouled living beings (thus blocking all stem cell science). This topic should be out of the realm of scientific or bioethical discussion. This is theology, and it has no place on the PCBE. Further, these potential ties to creationists are not surprising. Because, if you don't believe that life began 3.5 billion years ago and that instead you are a special non-animal product of a divine creator, you would probably believe stupid shit like life "beginning" every time someone gets pregnant. Sorry, but scientifically, that's not how it works. Life is continuous, there is no "dead" or non-living stage in human reproduction. Deal with it. These people are talking about when our souls appear in embryos, and there is no scientific basis for dealing with that particular topic. The only scientifically acceptible answer to the question of when life begins is to say that it doesn't. It began a long time ago and hasn't stopped since. Maybe that's why the crooks at the DI are so afraid of evolution.