In the 1990s, the possibility of using genetic technology to clone animals, and even humans, raised previously unheard-of ethical questions, as did the promise and moral hazards of stem-cell research. George W. Bush formed the President’s Council on Bioethics to study and address these issues, but Donald Trump let the institution lie dormant, as has his successor. With new challenges arising—such as sex-changes and gene-editing—and the likelihood that the near future will bring even greater advances in medicine, Seth Higgins argues that it’s time to revive this institution:

The lessons of President Bush and his bioethics council do not suggest bioethics councils push these issues aside or decrease their intensity. The bioethical debates of the decade were brutal; Bush and his council were frequently attacked. However, the bioethics-council model allows debate to be ushered through an institution designed to take opposing viewpoints of experts and average citizens alike and channel them into research that produces reports and legislative proposals. Demagogues and those looking to score cheap political points are stymied when a functional, highly engaged bioethics council is in place.

After a two-term hiatus, it is time for the next president to articulate his or her moral vision on bioethics and form a council to address the questions of today. What the next president should not do is create a new agency to address these matters.

As this newsletter noted last week, Gaza is not suffering from famine, and the efforts to suggest that it is—which have been going on since at least the beginning of last year—are based on deliberate manipulation of the data. Nor, as Shany Mor explains, does international law require Israel to feed its enemies:

Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention does oblige High Contracting Parties to allow for the free passage of medical and religious supplies along with “essential foodstuff, clothing, and tonics intended for children under fifteen” for the civilians of another High Contracting Party, as long as there is no serious reason for fearing that “the consignments may be diverted from their destination,” or “that a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy” by the provision.

The Hamas regime in Gaza is, of course, not a High Contracting Party, and, more importantly, Israel has reason to fear both that aid provisions are diverted by Hamas and that a direct advantage is accrued to it by such diversions. Not only does Hamas take provisions for its own forces, but its authorities sell provisions donated by foreign bodies and use the money to finance its war. It’s notable that the first reports of Hamas’s financial difficulties emerged only in the past few weeks, once provisions were blocked.

Yet, since the war began, even European states considered friendly to Israel have repeatedly demanded that Israel “allow unhindered passage of humanitarian aid” and refrain from seizing territory or imposing “demographic change”—which means, in practice, that Gazan civilians can’t seek refuge abroad. These principles don’t merely constitute a separate system of international law that applies only to Israel, but prolong the suffering of the people they are ostensibly meant to protect:

By insisting that Hamas can’t lose any territory in the war it launched, the international community has invented a norm that never before existed and removed one of the few levers Israel has to pressure it to end the war and release the hostages.

These commitments have . . . made the plight of the hostages much worse and much longer. They made the war much longer than necessary and much deadlier for both sides. And they locked a large civilian population in a war zone where the de-facto governing authority was not only indifferent to civilian losses on its own side, but actually had much to gain by it.