In terms of NIH's ELSI program, Juengst is fielding criticism aimed at the branch's failure to produce a federal genetic privacy law and at the branch's unsuitability to act as its own watchdog. Given what we know about the history of other attempts to develop and introduce sweeping social legislation, . . . Such an effort, he adds, is roughly equal in complexity to the human genome project itself. And the most visible kind of product is a law. There ought to be a law.
Grantees are free to speak their minds about the issues.
It's not what NIH is set up to do. Juengst said the OTA report, which concluded that the United States should have a federal bioethics body, is perceived in the scientific policy and ethics community as a first step in that effort. For the commission, as well as the public, the challenge will be to manage the work that comes out of the NIH genome project.