C ONCLUSION

Ultimately, other than well-balanced and transparent deliberation, there is no other ground for national bioethics commissions’ political legitimacy in a democratic society. Symbolic rulings that intend to pacify the people cannot withstand public debate. Neither can commissions with biased membership provide any political legitimacy to the government’s ultimate decisions.

For governments that rush to set up national bioethics commissions, the message of this paper thus is that a sound process of moral debate and deliberation is the only cornerstone for these bioethics commissions’

legitimacy. After all, commissions with only formalistic or ceremonial significance abound. There is no reason to assume that national bioethics commissions would be respected, simply because other bioethics commissions won respect in other countries. Without formal legal authority, the commissions will not earn any moral authority merely because the government appoints their members. Although the commission might be able to win attention and expectation because of its unusual members involved in the beginning, if its decisions turn out to violate public expectation without good reason, it will soon lose its de facto legitimacy, and become another formalistic commission. It must preserve the legitimacy it carefully built up.

For governments that sincerely wish to promote bioethics and find common grounds among the public, however, a message of this paper is that to better inform the public and promote ethical debate, the government should open the commission’s membership to more diversity, and disclose the reasoning of the debate. The cost to reach moral consensus will not be cheap, especially when there is little forum already existing in the society to serve this function and the government has to start from the scratch, but so is not our society’s moral value of life and science.

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