Abstract

LeRoy Walters was a central figure in debates about federal policy regarding genetics and biotechnology—a neutral, publicly engaged philosopher and religious studies academic who put his skills to work in national service. His career spanned the emergence of biotechnology as a field in the 1970s until his retirement. His interests reached from moral philosophical theory to Holocaust studies to practical concerns about public policy in genetics. We focus here on the role of bioethics in policy related to the advent of human gene transfer, the Human Genome Project, and the emergence of biotechnology as a commercial enterprise. We focus on his role as an academic influencing the government strand of the “triple helix”...