Medical journal article criticizes recommendations of NIH panel, but many contend that politics remains the real obstacle.
The scientific community is up in arms about a recent editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine regarding the use of human embryos in research. Writing in the May 16 issue of the journal, in an article titled "The politics of human embryo research-Avoiding ethical gridlock" (G.J. Annas et al., 334:1329-32, 1996), the authors argue that a National Institutes of Health-sponsored panel's recommendations supporting such research have been more or less ignored by the government because the panel failed to establish a "persuasive moral case" for its conclusions.
STATUS COUNTS: Penn's Arthur Caplan supports the use of spare embryos. The article's authors are George J. Annas, a professor of health law at Boston University School of Medicine; Arthur L. Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania Medical ...
