Andrew, Elizabeth Blackburn may be entirely right about why she’s no longer on the council, but I don’t see why that interview she gave should embarrass anyone but her. She is clearly speculating about why she was let go. She offers no evidence that it was why she was let go. The characterizations she makes of the council’s work, meanwhile, are simply false. It just isn’t true that the council was constantly making the argument that “[y]ou don’t need any of those pesky embryonic stem cells because everything is wonderful with adult stem cells.” There have been people who (unfortunately in my view) have made that argument, but the council just hasn’t. (See its paper on alternative sources of pluripotent stem cells, for example.) As for this “pre-set political agenda”: If it existed, why didn’t the council endorse Bush’s proposed ban on human cloning?

Ron Bailey should know better, and so should you.