Department of Health and Human Services October 27, 2008 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The President's Council on Bioethics (Edmund D. Pellegrino, MD, Chairman) will hold its thirty-fifth meeting, at which it will discuss three topics: exercises of conscience in the practice of the health professions, the problem of medical futility, and the future of public bioethics and national bioethics commissions in the United States. Subjects discussed at past Council meetings (although not on the agenda for the November 2008 meeting) include: therapeutic and reproductive cloning, assisted reproduction, reproductive genetics, neuroscience, aging retardation, organ transplantation, personalized medicine, standards for the determination of death, children and bioethics, and lifespan-extension among others. Publications issued by the Council to date include: Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry (July 2002); Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness (October 2003); Being Human: Readings from the President's Council on Bioethics (December 2003); Monitoring Stem Cell Research (January 2004), Reproduction and Responsibility: The Regulation of New Biotechnologies (March 2004), Alternative Sources of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells: A White Paper (May 2005), Taking Care: Ethical Caregiving in Our Aging Society (September 2005), and Human Dignity and Bioethics: Essays Commissioned by the President's Council on Bioethics (March 2008). Reports are forthcoming on four topics: controversies in the determination of death; organ donation, procurement, allocation, and transplantation; newborn screening; and medical care and the common good.