Okarma, the vice president of Geron, testified, "The company formed an ethics advisory board to advise us on ethical issues associated with this research. The board, composed of medical ethicists of diverse religious traditions, carefully deliberated the issues and unanimously agreed that research on human pluripotent stem cells can be conducted ethically if performed within certain guidelines: treating the cells with appropriate respect due to early developmental tissue, obtaining full and informed consent from donors of the tissue, no reproductive cloning of human beings, accord for accepted norms of animal research, concern for global justice and the use of best efforts to develop and utilize technology for all peoples, and lastly, participation by an independent ethics advisory board in addition to an institutional review board to assess the appropriateness of each research protocol. Geron has and will continue to follow these guidelines."

This statement is an instructive example of the empty Ethical Correctness that pervades biotechnology. It emphasizes procedural issues ("respect" for embryos, "informed consent," and humane "animal research"), forbids what the company doesn't plan to do ("reproductive cloning"), and ignores the significance of what the company does plan to do (manufacturing and redesigning organs) while repeatedly invoking buzzwords such as "ethics," "justice," and "religious traditions."