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Elizabeth Blackburn, Fired by President Bush from Bioethics Commission, Awarded Franklin Medal

Elizabeth Blackburn is a great scientist, the only stem cell biologist who served on the Presidents Council on Bioethics under Leon Kass, and those who watched as she was dismissed from the Council were appalled - particularly at the assertion by Kass in newspapers that Blackburn was dismissed not for her politics but because she did not participate in the panel's discussions. If you followed the scandal you know that Blackburn was in fact very active in the discussions, by email, but that at the heart of the matter was the question of how to cast her contributions as a scientist to the public debate.

Benjamin Franklin would have loved Elizabeth Blackburn, and no doubt it is that fact - as well as her basic science acumen - that insipred the judges at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia to award her the Benjamin Franklin medal, which has been awarded to truly outstanding scientists since 1824.

Blackburn, an Australian who is now a U.S. citizen and a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, was one of 18 people chosen in 2001 to serve on the President's Council on Bioethics. She researched developments in embryonic stem cells and told her fellow council members that the field held great promise in the health-care field.

The use of such cells from human embryos is opposed by abortion opponents. Blackburn and another scientist were replaced in 2004 with three people who held more conservative views.

The panel chairman said her removal was not related to politics, but Blackburn disagrees. She wrote of her experience in a two-page column in the New England Journal of Medicine, and said she received positive calls and letters from around the world.

'People don't like the idea that science policy is not being based on evidence,' she said yesterday."