As Professor Edwards talks about the clinical imperative as a moral force, it seems that that is out of step with legal and social processes to establish appropriate boundaries or limits on what are perceived as risks. Likewise, current law fails to promote the development of ethical norms. We need to include public opinion in this ethical framework. Public attitudes and opinions are important in developing the framework and establishing the parameters. While this may seem distasteful, but over time such a framework will develop policies that will be flexible enough to incorporate new scientific understanding, yet will be true to fundamental core social values.
Public opinion is a sleeping tiger.
If scientific inquiry and applications get too far ahead of public opinion, the public can lash out and, through legal or political processes, shut down avenues of investigation and indeed potential benefit. For example, in California, through the 5 ballot initiative process, Californians can obtain enough signatures on a proposition and effectively circumvent the legislative process. I'm not saying this is necessarily a rational process for policy making, but simply to point out that the process exists. Not only do research and clinicians need an ethical framework to guide their research, but also in thinking about the compliance with the legal rules that might be developed will protect researchers from what others might be perceived as abusive or dangerous, and I think the challenge that we face is to develop the ethical tenets to guide the research, and I will offer some ideas on this in a minute. But let me very briefly talk about some recent events that might remind us of why the public might have cause to question leaving these sorts of embryo research ethics merely in the hands of scientists.