Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues

Updated on Dec 26, 2024

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The Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues (the Commission) was created by Executive Order 13521 on November 24, 2009. It is an advisory panel of the United States in medicine, science, ethics, religion, law, and engineering. The Commission advises the President on bioethical issues arising from advances in biomedicine and related areas of science and technology. The Commission seeks to identify and promote policies and practices that ensure scientific research, health care, and technological innovation are conducted in a socially and ethically responsible manner.

Reports

Gray Matters: Topics at the Intersection of Neuroscience, Ethics, and Society (Gray Matters, Vol. 2), published March 2015, seeks to clarify the scientific landscape, identify common ground, and recommend ethical paths forward, broadly focusing its analysis on three topics: cognitive enhancement, consent capacity, and neuroscience and the legal system.

Ethics and Ebola: Public Health Planning and Response, published in February 2015, provides seven recommendations offering targeted policy and research design suggestions, including the integration of ethical principles into timely and agile public health decision making processes employed in response to rapidly unfolding epidemics.

Gray Matters: Integrative Approaches for Neuroscience, Ethics, and Society (Gray Matters, Vol. 1), published in May 2014, recommends an early and explicit integration of ethics throughout research, as well as the integration of ethics and science through education at all levels, the evaluation of existing and innovative approaches to ethics integration, and the explicit inclusion of ethical perspectives on advisory and review bodies.

Anticipate and Communicate: Ethical Management of Incidental and Secondary Findings in the Clinical, Research, and Direct-to-Consumer Contexts, published in December 2013, recommends that all practitioners anticipate and plan for incidental and secondary findings and communicate that plan to patients, research participants, and consumers so they are informed ahead of time about what to expect.

Safeguarding Children: Pediatric Medical Countermeasure Research, published in March 2013, concluded that the federal government would have to take multiple steps before anthrax vaccine trials with children could be ethically considered.

Privacy and Progress in Whole Genome Sequencing, published in October 2012, concluded that to realize the enormous promise that whole genome sequencing holds for advancing clinical care as a public good, individual interests in privacy must be respected and secured.

Moral Science: Protecting Participants in Human Subjects Research, published in December 2011, recommends 14 changes to current practices to better protect participants in research. In particular, the Commission called on the federal government to improve its tracking of research programs supported with taxpayer dollars.

"Ethically Impossible": STD Research in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948, published in September 2011, concluded that the Guatemala syphilis experiments "involved unconscionable basic violations of ethics, even as judged against the researchers’ own recognition of the requirements of the medical ethics of the day".

New Directions: The Ethics of Synthetic Biology and Emerging Technologies, published in December 2010, recommended increased federal oversight of synthetic biology research.