20th Anniversary of the Oviedo Convention. Conclusion and suggested actions. Report prepared by the Rapporteur Group appointed by the Committee of Bioethics of the Council of Europe

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Background to the Report

Under the auspices of the Czech Presidency of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, a conference to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Oviedo Convention was held in Strasbourg on October 24th-25th 2017. As outlined by Prof. Zvonko MAGIC, Chair of the Preparatory Group for the Conference, in his opening remarks, the objective of the conference was to reflect upon the relevance of the principles articulated in the Convention and the possible challenges posed to those principles in light of the scientific and technological developments and the evolution of established practices in the biomedical field in the 20 years since the inception of the Convention.

The conference addressed the following subjects. The Session I dealt with International case-law in Bioethics: insight and foresight. The Session II was related to the evolution of practices in the biomedical field: autonomy – consent and privacy as well as equity of access to health care. And the Session III was concerning the New scientific and technological

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developments, that is to say, genetics– genomics, brain technologies and information technologies/NBIC and big data.

We include, below, some conclusions that were reached in the afore-mentioned conference.

Conclusion and suggested actions

The Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine is the first and only internationally binding legal instrument in the field of biomedicine. The Convention provides a “common framework for the protection of human rights and human dignity in both longstanding and developing areas concerning the application of biology and medicine”1. While Europe shares many common values including human dignity, which is ascribed a funda-mental role in the Convention, there still exists a diversity of views regarding bioethical issues. Thus the “adoption of a binding instrument in this sensitive field represents a remarkable accomplishment of the Council of Europe”2.

The Convention acts as a reference document internationally and has had significant influence on legislation and practices at the national level, even in those Council of Europe Member States who have not signed and/or ratified the Convention. Indeed, the Convention is a beacon for the protection of human rights in the biomedical field outside the European context; Mexico is currently considering accession to the Oviedo Convention. Another interesting development highlighted in this conference is the increasing frequency with which the ECtHR refers to the Convention in its judgments3. Thus, the Convention remains influential and relevant and the Committee on Bioethics may wish to consider surveying Member States who have not ratified and/or signed the Convention to ascertain the perceived obstacles to their accession to the Convention.

A number of over-arching themes emerged during the course of the conference, including the increasing blurring of the boundary between medicine, research and the private sphere; the need to reconnect technologies to values and the necessity of public dialogue and deliberation in the regulation of scientific advances in the field of biomedicine.

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Use of genomic data collected in the clinical context is increasingly being utilised for research purposes. Likewise, emerging technologies and NBIC4convergence enables the application of biomedical technologies beyond the medical sphere. One clear illustration of this point is the in-creasing use of biodata for nonmedical purposes for example, marketing. A key characteristic of the NBIC convergence is the gradual dissolution of the borders between the physical and the biological sciences. This raises the question of how to balance technological progress with human values and whether existing governance frameworks including the Convention on Bio-medicine can deal with the ethical issues raised by the blurring of boundaries. While the question of the ethical use of technology and the protection against the misuse of technology is not a new one, the speed of development and the...

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