The latest report from the President's Council on Bioethics is set to be released tomorrow and already the unanimous report is stirring controversy. The report suggests potential regulations on certain reproductive technologies. But the report has already been drawn into the debate over federally funding of embryonic stem cell research (even though the body of the report says nothing about the issue at all).

In personal statements attached to the report, members of the Council seem to disagree on whether conclusions in the new report open the door to increased federal funding of embryonic stem cell research--funding that has been limited to stem cell lines created before August 9, 2001.

Yesterday's NYT report quotes the personal statement at the end of the report by members Daniel W. Foster, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Janet Rowley, Michael J. Sandel, and James Q. Wilson as saying, "[The proposed rules], taken together, point toward a possible compromise on federal funding of stem cell research." By this they mean that if Congress were to follow their recommendation in the report and limit research on embryos to 10 or 14 days (depending upon which recommendation you take), expanded federal funding of such research is then also justified.

But members Robert George, Mary Ann Glendon, Alfonso Gomez-Lobo, William Hurlbut, and Gilbert Meilaender differ saying in their personal statement attached to the end of the report:

The Council is entirely silent about whether research on human embryos before the 10/14 day limit should be conducted or legally permitted, and, hence, the Council has in no way endorsed such research. Because of its silence on this matter, the Council does not endorse the destruction of human embryos at any stage of their development.

Although the Council's earlier report, Human Cloning and Human Dignity, dealt only with embryos produced by cloning, these silences cohere well with the position endorsed by the Council majority in that report and with current policy of the federal government to prohibit federal financing of any research using stem cells derived from human embryos produced after August 9, 2001 (the date of the institution of that policy).

What we allow to occur and what we federally fund with taxpayer dollars (making them complicit in the activity) are two fundamentally different things. Foster et. al. think that if the research is allowed, it should therefore be funded.

But since when do we have a mandate in this country to fund whatever is legal, especially that which is highly controversial? We allow abortions, but, generally speaking, taxpayers don't pay for them. It's one thing to allow limited embryo research, but something more to force everyone to be complicit in it's execution.