For those of you who will not be reading former President George W. Bush’s autobiography, Decision Points (I am among them), the National Journal has pulled out some choice selections of those items that might not make the headlines.
I, for one, am SO glad that they found the following “decision point” that W. has chosen to reveal to us:
“Leon Kass, a physician, philosophy professor at the University of Chicago and later the chair of Bush’s presidential bioethics council, was ultimately responsible for solidifying Bush’s position on stem cell research. Bush details the myriad advice he received about the decision but ultimately relied on Kass’s guidance to take his final stance.”
Although few of us ought ultimately be surprised that Leon Kass was the devil whispering into the President’s ear, it is a wonderful vindication to have it finally written in print from the source.
This revelation is ironic after Wesley J. Smith, reposted just two days ago his screed, Kass in the Firing Line, against Glenn McGee for calling out Leon Kass for his dealings with the Bush White House. It would turn out, as McGee and others stated, that bioethicists were right to be critical of Kass for his influence over the President and his agenda.
For that period, as as McGee wrote in a 2003 AJOB editorial, “It [was] the era of Leon Kass”, a legacy we are continuing to undo (to our chagrin) to this day.
Summer McGee, PhD