INTERNATIONAL BIOETHICS
COMMITTEE TO MEET IN QUITO, NOVEMBER 7 - 9
Paris, October 16 (No.2000-102)
- UNESCO’s International Bioethics Committee (IBC) will hold its seventh
session from November 7 to 9 in Quito (Ecuador) to reflect on the ethical and
legal issues raised by research in the life sciences and their application.
Two reports compiled by working
groups the IBC established at its previous meeting will be presented to the
session. The first - to be discussed on November 8 - concerns the ethical
aspects of embryonic stem cell research and raises questions such as: Should
embryonic stem cells be considered in the same way as the embryo, or do they
have a different status? Should “therapeutic cloning” be authorised?
The second report - on
solidarity and international co-operation between developed and developing
countries concerning the human genome - will be presented on November 9. It
features proposals to help finance human genome research, training and the
dissemination of knowledge in developing countries.
The economic aspects of
research, in the light of recent advances in human genome sequencing, will also
be examined in a session presided by Michael Kirby, Justice of the High Court of
Australia. Participants will include: Pascal Brandys (France),
President of Biotech France; José Maria Cantú (Mexico), President of
the Latin-America Human Genome Project (PLAGH); Maria Freire
(USA), Director of the Office for Technology Transfer (NIH); and Huanming
Yang (China), Director of the Human Genome Center, Chinese Academy of Medical
Sciences, and Secretary General of the Chinese Human Genome Project.
During the session, IBC’s
thirty-six members will be kept abreast of recent advances in research, as is
customary during the Committee’s yearly sessions. This year, presentations
will focus on ageing and neuroscience. Prospects opened up by the completion of
the human genome-mapping project will also be addressed.
The IBC will hold a
consultation with patient associations on issues raised by developments in
genetic research, in keeping with the principles set out in Article 24 of the
Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (1997). The following
groups will take part in the consultation: Association française pour les
myopathies (AFM); Patients’ Coalition for Urgent Research (Washington,
DC); European Parkinsonians (EUROPARK); Inclusion International.
Furthermore, a roundtable
debate will focus on bioethics education. It will be moderated by the President
of Italy’s Bioethics Committee, Giovanni Berlinguer, and will bring together
Amnon Carmi, President of the World Association for Medical Law (WAML); Myriam
Cotler, Director of the Department of Life Sciences at California State
University;
Leonardo D. De Castro,
Philosophy Professor at the University of the Philippines; Fernando Lola Stepke,
Director of the Regional Bioethics Program of the Pan American Health
Organization (PAHO); and Darryl Macer, Director of the Eubios Ethics Institute,
University of Tsukuba, Japan.
The IBC, chaired by Kyoto
University Law Professor Ryuichi Ida (Japan), was created by UNESCO in 1993 to
study the ethical and legal implications of genetic engineering and human genome
research. The IBC furthermore endeavours to promote access to new biomedical
therapies and vaccines in both developed and developing countries.
****