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Guidelines will help ensure standards, say delegates at globalbioethics meeting
IN THE modern world, global guidelines are needed to stop rogue science research and practice, said representatives of an international bioethics summit yesterday.
For instance, new technology allows scientists to engineer biological systems not found in nature, in a field called synthetic biology.
That can be used for good – or for bioterrorists to make “killer viruses”, said Dr Rudiger Krech, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) director for ethics, equity, trade and human rights.
In fact, some years ago, Australian scientists tinkering with a mouse pox virus created a strain of the virus by accident that was lethal to mice, and researchers feared the same techniques could be deliberately harnessed to harm humans.
Countries must also deal with the issue of their citizens either travelling to poor states to buy organs, or selling their organs to the rich, Dr Krech added.
He was speaking at a press conference yesterday after the 8th Global Summit of National Bioethics Advisory Bodies at the Suntec convention centre.
The biennial meeting of countries’ bioethics committees is a forum for ethical issues of the day. It was held in Singapore for the first time, on Monday and yesterday. The 10th World Congress of Bioethics, an academic and
scholarly conference, is also being held here this week at Suntec.
At the summit, national representatives of bioethics committees from more than 30 countries discussed organ transplants, synthetic biology, international research collaboration and other issues. Attendees ranged from developing nations like Uganda and Burkina Faso in Africa, to the United States, France and China.
In particular, three WHO documents were discussed.
The first, on human cell, tissue and organ transplantation, was adopted at the WHO’s World Health Assembly in May this year, and representatives at the meeting discussed its implementation in their home countries.
Another set of discussions would contribute to procedures and standards for research ethics committees worldwide. For example, noted Dr Krech, international research collaborations were increasingly being used to sidestep ethical guidelines in one country.
“That is something we’ve increasingly seen, especially if you’re including research from the big companies, multinational companies, who then can just move their research from one country to the next,” he said.
A third WHO document was on control of tuberculosis, and the issues that arise when a patient with the airborne bacterial disease tries to travel.
Last month, the WHO itself came under scrutiny for conflict of interests, when a British Medical Journal report showed that WHO pandemic guidelines were being drawn up by scientists who had ties to drug companies.
Dr Marie-Charlotte Bouësseau, Dr Krech’s colleague at the WHO, said last night that the organisation was taking “some serious measures” to address the issue.
“Conflict of interest is one of the issues mentioned during this global summit as a priority issue... definitely something to be addressed not only by one organisation, but also at the national level,” she said.
Former senior district judge Richard Magnus, chair of the summit’s organising committee and a member of Singapore’s Bioethics Advisory Committee (BAC) said that on Singapore’s part, it would ensure that its own bioethics practices on issues like organ transplants “harmonise with international acceptance and international normative practices”.
Professor Lee Hin Peng, the BAC’s deputy chairman, said the BAC would meet in the coming weeks to decide whether it would work on some of these issues.
However, he said, whether it would put out consultation papers on specific issues was not yet discussed.
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