|
 Resolution 30C/24 on Bioethics and the rights of the child,
adopted on 16 november 1999
Presentation
Today many an application of the formidable scientific progress has
significant implications for humanity. They are nonetheless fraught
with fundamental ethical interrogations. Indeed, whilst each and every
member of society, and particularly the most vulnerable, children,
should benefit from this progress, they may also be exposed to its
potential dangers.
Children are vulnerable, fragile beings, as their physical and mental
welfare and the full development of their personalities depend to a
large extent on their parents, on the adults in their immediate
environment and on society as a whole. Children's rights - indeed as
the rights of every person - are enshrined in the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights (10 December 1948) and in the two International
Covenants on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and on Civil and
Political Rights (16 December 1966). In particular, the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child (20 November 1989) provides for
special protection. The ethical aspects of scientific progress are
highlighted in two recent texts: the Universal Declaration on the Human
Genome and Human Rights (adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO on
11 November 1997), and, at the regional level, the European Convention
on Human Rights and Biomedicine (signed on 4 April 1997).
Technologies developed to treat infertility, such as medical assistance
to human reproduction, and genetics applications designed to prevent
certain genetic conditions are at a risk of being diverted from their
aims, in order to serve quite different purposes such as eugenic
selection. Certain prenatal tests, which are meant to detect genetic
mutations, can be applied, for instance, to select foetuses based on
gender selection. Pre-implantation diagnoses could lend themselves to
further drifts. The same could be said for techniques that have not yet
been mastered, such as the cloning of embryos or, in a more distant
future, the cloning of adult somatic cells.
The difficulties that these issues present to ethical reflection must
not be denied. They directly entail religious or spiritual convictions
and are often at the core of diverse cultural traditions. From one
country to another, from one community to another, the answers to these
questions come laden with subtle nuances as well as significant
contrasts.
In addition, tensions may exist between two sets of rights, such as the
rights of adults, who are parents, and those of their children,
jeopardizing the effective exercise of various civil rights. By virtue
of Article 23 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights adults can invoke the right to found a family and demand access
to new reproductive technologies. Similarly, the separation of a couple
who has resorted to in vitro fertilisation to have a child and later
(when admissible by law) files in a suit of denying parenthood to that
child, puts at stake the right of every child to have a name or a
nationality, as per Article 24 of the same Covenant. Courts have to
deal with dramatic cases of surrogate motherhood, whereby children seek
to identify their biological mother, or in cases of parents who request
parental identification procedures, notably after a recourse to in
vitro fertilization with sperm and/or egg donor. Shouldn't the rights
of the child prevail over those of adults? Shouldn't the interest of
the child take precedence over the will or interests of the family?
Does the desire to have a child legitimize all practices? Must
biological parenthood be preferred at all cost to sociological
parenthood (for instance, through adoption)? In short, how best can the
rights of the child, the rights of the family and the freedom of women
be balanced, whilst preventing the desire to have a child from reducing
the child to an object?
On another hand, medical research is bound to devise experimentation on
children who suffer from specific diseases in order to develop
treatments targeting diseases that specifically affect children.
Perhaps this, more than any other, is a question that warrants rigorous
study. Such is the need to pay close attention to biomedical research -
an indispensable condition of progress - if the rights of the child are
to be protected.
It should be added that many children in the world are waiting for
organ transplants and, for reasons of biological compatibility, the
organs they need must be taken from children. Are the questions
surrounding the removal of organs from children straightforward? Do all
such cases meet the conditions set forth to ensure that the rights of
the child are protected?
Far from exhaustive, these various interrogations provided the
framework of the International Symposium on Bioethics and the Rights of
the Child. The symposium further underscored such issues as anonymity,
and the consent that is given by the child, or in his or her name.
A Statement was adopted at the closing of the Symposium. It stressed
the prevalence of the rights of the child over those of adults,
underscored the unshakeable singularity of each child, and contributed
to paving the way to renewed thinking on all these issues. In so doing,
this Statement was timely.
 The papers presented at the Symposium were published by UNESCO
Follow-up
As a follow-up to the 2000 Symposium, AMADE strives:
- to
call upon a better protection of the inalienable Rights of the Child in
biological, medical and genetic research;
- to promote
international standards for considering the physical and mental welfare
of the child in all areas relating to medical treatment and genetics
application;
- to inform public opinion, the media and
policy-makers about the risk of advances in genetics being diverted
from their initial aims.
|
