The issues raised by the intertwining of law and human biotechnologies are often technically and socially complex. What's a busy jurist to do?

If the Biotechnology Industry Organization has its way, she'll click on to biojudiciary.org: A Jurist's Guide to 21st Century Biotechnology. In an introductory statement, former BIO president Carl Feldbaum writes that the project aims to give judges and legal professionals a "neutral" and "objective educational resource."

This goal is unlikely to be attained. The project's founders, board of directors, and working group members are drawn from BIO itself, biotech companies, or their law firms (with the single exception of an analyst from the Congressional Research Service). Not one public interest organization is represented; not one academic figure is included.

Feldbaum points out that "the biotechnology industry did not take off until the 1980 Supreme Court decision in Diamond v. Chakrabarty upheld the right to patent organisms." BIO knows how to follow the money.

The Associated Press reported yesterday that a leading evangelical would support hormonal "treatments" for fetuses if genetic tests that can identify them as predisposed to be gay are developed. In a March 2 blog post, the Reverend R. Albert Mohler, Jr. concluded, "If such knowledge should ever be discovered, we should embrace it and use it for the greater good of humanity and for the greater glory of God."

His remarks set both red and blue bloggers abuzz, with charges of "eugenics" and "designer babies" flying.

Mohler's stance is carefully consistent with his theological commitments. He opposes abortion. He calls pre-implantation genetic diagnosis "one of the greatest threats to human dignity in our times." He affirms "the basic sinfulness of all homosexual behavior," while simultaneously arguing emphatically that "all persons-whether identified as heterosexual, homosexual, lesbian, transsexual, transgendered, bisexual, or whatever-are equally made in the image of God."

Unfortunately, Mohler's desire to "do something about" embryos identified as gay is not confined to religious conservatives. For a proposal from the liberal end of the political spectrum, see bioethicist Edgar Dahl's 2003 article in Human Reproduction, which argues that "parents should be permitted to use PGD to choose the sexual orientation of their children." 

On the heels of the IOM's suggestion to relax restrictions on using prisoners in clinical trials, South Carolina is looking to push the envelope a bit further: incentivizing prisoners to "donate" organs by skimming 180 days off their sentence. No, this isn't Beijing. We're talking about Charleston which, despite General Lee's efforts, is still subject to federal law that forbids any "valuable consideration" to be given in exchange for organs. This hasn't dismayed a bipartisan state Senate panel, which hopes to find a loophole to permit the proposed program. What's going on here? First the federal government wants to use prisoners to test drugs, now states want to harvest prisoners for their organs. What's next? 200 days shaved from women's prison sentences for donating eggs for stem cell research? This shift from prisons as rehabilitative institutions to profitable biomedical repositories is more than troubling.

Check out Jeffrey Rosen's piece in Sunday's New York Times on neuroscience's possible legal impacts. Here's an excerpt:

"Proponents of neurolaw say that neuroscientific evidence will have a large impact not only on questions of guilt and punishment but also on the detection of lies and hidden bias, and on the prediction of future criminal behavior. At the same time, skeptics fear that the use of brain-scanning technology as a kind of super mind-reading device will threaten our privacy and mental freedom, leading some to call for the legal system to respond with a new concept of 'cognitive liberty.' [Also to consider,] should courts be in the business of deciding when to mitigate someone's criminal responsibility because his brain functions improperly, whether because of age, in-born defects or trauma? As we learn more about criminals' brains, will we have to redefine our most basic ideas of justice?"