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US advisory committee on genetic testing to be dismantled
As part of a comprehensive restructuring of the scientific advisory committees that advise the US federal government on aspects of science policy, the Bush administration has decided that the charter of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Genetic Testing (SACGT), established during the Clinton presidency, will not be renewed. The SACGT had embarked on an ambitious programme to establish a regulatory regime for genetic tests, based on rigorous assessment of their analytical and clinical validity, their clinical utility, and the ethical and social implications of their use. The aim was to bring some scrutiny to bear on the increasing number of genetic tests marketed directly to the public and to doctors. The regulatory system was to have been devised and overseen by the SACGT and implemented by the US Food and Drug Administration. However, the Washington Post reports that incoming officials in the Bush administration raised questions about the legitimacy of the SACGT’s role, and that as a result its work has stalled. Now the SACGT is to be disbanded. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, it is to be replaced by a broader-based committee that will advise on a wider range of issues concerned with genetics and genetic technology. Critics fear that the aim is to create an advisory system that will reflect the Bush administration’s conservative line on issues such as embryo research, and its preference for minimal regulation of industry.