UNESCO and the science of mind,

I have been involved in a discussion on the UNESCO's Friends group on Linked In of the biology of mind and the need for an international venue for discussion of the policy implications of the emerging science and its technological repercussions.

Scientists have been illuminating the incredible plasticity of the brain. That plasticity is not that the different organs within the skull migrate physically. Scientists now know that the number of neurons in the brain peaks during early childhood and then some die not to be replaced; they also have shown that there remain stem cells in the brain and new neurons are created long into adult life. Still it is believed that most of the changes are in the connections among neurons and the ability of neurons to excite or inhibit the actions of other neurons.

The biology of mind seems to be an emerging discipline. Imaging techniques, electrical recording techniques and molecular biology are combining to produce rates of scientific knowledge production in this area that were hardly imaginable a couple of decades ago. It seems likely that the burgeoning of knowledge will lead to important applications. This turning point might turn out to be similar to semiconductor physics leading to semiconductor electronics or atomic physics leading to nuclear energy.

We now know the Flynn Effect, that average performance on IQ tests is improving:

The average rate of increase seems to be about three IQ points per decade in the U.S. on tests such as the WISC. The increasing raw scores appear on every major test, in every age range and in every modern industrialized country although not necessarily at the same rate as in the U.S. using the WISC. The increase has been continuous and roughly linear from the earliest days of testing to the present.

This may be because people are increasingly learning things measured by IQ tests instead of other unmeasured things that they learned in the past, or perhaps because people are on average actually becoming more intelligent. (Perhaps a smaller part of the population are subject to poor nutrition and childhood diseases that limit the development of the brain, or are subject to poor intellectual environment and inadequate schooling that would limit their learning opportunities.) Whatever the explanation, since IQ test performance is clearly a function of the behavior of the brain, on average, the brain of today (in industrialized countries) is different than was, on average, the brain of yesteryear.

I see no reason to believe that brains will not continue on the average to change. I would suggest that our objectives in schooling and in lifelong learning would be to encourage brain development, on average, in beneficial directions. Schooling has tended to focus on facts and analysis. Perhaps it should focus more on other aspects of learning. For example, perhaps it should seek to assure that learning excites the pleasure centers of the brain.

Homo sapiens are social animals, and there is evidence that we make better decisions in groups than as individuals. Perhaps we need to consider the biology of the group mind. Perhaps schooling should include specific efforts to help people learn better how to think together, to solve problems in groups.

It has also been suggested that we think with our surround. In my father's day (born in 1905 in Ireland) it made sense for schools to promote the development of memory; in my youth (born 1937) we were taught library skills but had less memory training; today's infants will be brought up with hand-held devices connected to the Internet and will be taught to find and evaluate information from cyberspace. So too, modern schooling should help people learn to use the analytic capabilities of computers to amplify their own analysis.

My point is that the improving science of the biology of the mind should be reflected in changes in educational policy. This would seem to be an area of special concern for UNESCO with its emphasis on both education and science. UNESCO also has for decades focused on the ethics of science and technology and bioethics, and there are clearly ethical issues in educational policy raised by the emerging science of the biology of mind.

However, that is but one area of policy that should reflect our emerging knowledge of mind. Clearly psychiatric policy will change as we better understand the brain, and as we develop better technology for diagnosis and treatment of brain dysfunctions; given the relation of "physical" and "mental" health, better science of the mind might also lead to more general changes in medical policy.

Legal policy may well change as we learn more about the brain and the biological bases of decisions and behavior. That seems obviously true for criminal justice, but it may also be true in areas such as legislation regarding marriage/

Information is accumulating as to the interplay between culture and the biology of mind. We know that the language we learn as children influences the allocation of space in the brain to different mental functions. We also know that culture is plastic -- that the cultures of today's nations have changed from the cultures of their predecessors. Not only are Western cultures different today than they were a century ago, but so too are "indigenous" cultures in Asia, Africa and the Americas. Perhaps we might induce positive changes in culture for our descendants through examination of the increasing knowledge of the biology of mind -- perhaps promoting cultures of peace and improved understanding among cultures. Again, UNESCO focuses on culture, science and ethics, so the ethical dimensions of the impact of the biology of mind on cultural change seems a natural area for UNESCO's concern.

UNESCO has served as a forum for discussion, a laboratory and a clearinghouse for ideas. Those are just the functions most immediately needed with respect to the science of mind!

Editorial: UNESCO should support capacity building needed to better assure the ethical conduct of research

UNESCO has a program on the ethics of science and technology. Let me suggest that that program undertake a major effort to improve the ethical conduct of research, especially through support for capacity building in developing nations. Some of the issues that merit high priority are:

• Misconduct in science, including such concerns as plagarism and fraudulent practices
• Assurance that the peoples exposed to risks inherent in risks are also representative of the potential beneficiaries of the research if it is successful
• Ethical treatment of researchers, laboratory workers and other people assisting in the research
• Ethical conduct with respect to human subjects involved in the research (this has several distinct elements which are treated differently, such as patients in biomedical research, subjects in psychological or social science research, subjects involved in online research. Cultural norms are different in different societies as to who should provide the consent, how to inform the consent giver, and the ethical responsibility to specific populations such as prisoners, military personnel and mental patients.
• Ethical conduct of the treatment of laboratory animals. Again, there are often different regulations for the treatment of non-human primates, caged mammals, livestock, fish, etc.
• Ethical conduct of the treatment of wild animals that are research subjects, such as those involved in catch and release programs.
• Ethical conduct with respect to the containment of materials involved in research. This is an especially complex area, including the containment of human, animal and plant pathogens, containment of exogenous species, containment of radiological materials, containment of recombinant and synthetic organisms. The issues are different with respect to the shipment, especially international shipment of materials, laboratory use of materials, and field release of materials.
• Appropriate treatment of environmental issues, such as assurance that endangered species will not be further endangered and there will be no other environmental problems caused as a result of the research
• Ethical issues related to the funding of research including preparation of proposals, there (peer) review, and the allocation of funds
• Ethical issues in the reporting of research, including the publication of results
• Ethical issue in the treatment of intellectual property arising from research
• Ethical issues in the conduct of research in different institutional settings, such as government laboratories, universities, corporations, foundations, and non-governmental organizations.
• Ethical conduct of research in multinational teams and by researchers working in countries other than their own

Those who have never worked in a research laboratory may not recognize how dangerous such a place may be. In the half dozen years in which I worked in an industrial laboratory, a couple of people were hospitalized due to a laboratory accident (one for many months), there was a release of toxic gases that killed livestock near one of the lab facilities, another of my colleagues was suffering from radiation sickness as a result of a previous laboratory accident, and when its nozzle broke a torpedo shaped tank of gas flew through wall after wall separating the different labs. As a research manager I had responsibility for epidemiological research programs in which research subjects died. I worked with very distinguished people who early in their careers were involved in the Nazi research lab in Peenemunde and in the Tuskegee Syphilis study. I take the ethical conduct of research very seriously, especially since the credibility of the scientific community is crucial to the utility of its work.

What can UNESCO do in this field? I would suggest that it can do many things, and often do them better than bilateral agencies of development banks:

• It can bring together experts from different cultures to discuss and debate such as those described above in order to clarify common ethical positions and those issues on which reasonable people can differ.
• It can provide an observatory, allowing science policy workers to easily access information on the systems that have been put in place around the world to assure the ethical conduct of research.
• It can convene meetings of science policy workers from countries seeking to collaborate in multinational research projects to discuss how their various concerns can all be met in such projects/
• It can identify expert consultants who can advise developing country science policy workers and institutions as to how they might build the capacity of their own organizational mechanisms to assure the ethical conduct of research.
• It can establish criteria and indicators that nations can utilize to measure their success in assuring the ethical conduct of research, and it can advise science policy workers as to how to do so in such a way that they can effectively compare their success with that of other nations.
• It can promote the development of training programs, especially international training programs such as those provided by UNESCO Category II Centers, on the ethical conduct of research.

As new fields of science come to the fore, so do new ethical issues. Thus the development of recombinant DNA led to issues with respect to the containment of recombinant organisms. The patenting of genes discovered in research also raised novel ethical issues. Thus, even the most developed national scientific institutions periodically must face new ethical issues. Perhaps more important, the detection of ethical problems regularly result in efforts to strengthen institutions assuring ethical behavior in order to prevent their recurrence. In the case of less developed nations, as new areas of research are first undertaken there arise new needs for institutional development to assure ethical action.

Other UN agencies and programs have interests in the ethical conduct of research. Thus, the World Health Organization has interests in helping its member nations assure the ethical conduct of biomedical research, the Food and Agriculture Organization with the ethical conduct of agricultural research, and the United Nations Environmental Program with that of environmental research. However, UNESCO given its wide responsibility for science and the long history of its program in the ethics of science and technology appears especially suited to work with science policy agencies in its member nations in order to build the ethical aspects of their national research institutions.

John Daly

The ideas expressed in this posting are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Americans for UNESCO.

Rethinking Development: Ethics and Social Inclusion

A two-day conference, “Rethinking Development: Ethics and Social Inclusion," is to be held in Mexico City, August 17 and 18, 2011. Organized by UNESCO and the Government of Mexico, the conference will bring together 25 experts to look at ways of moving beyond purely economic and technical approaches to development towards more democratic, environmentally sustainable, socially just and culturally pluralistic societies. More specifically, it is also to provide a framework for reflection in academic, activist and policy communities.

The conference is to help set an agenda for UNESCO’s thinking and action in the decisive period for the international community that will run from the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development to the expiry in 2015 of the Millennium Development Goals commitment period. It will also, more broadly, provide a framework for reflection in academic, activist and policy communities.

The conference will be opened by a formal introduction by Pilar Álvarez-Laso, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences.

The conference is open to the public, subject to prior registration. To register, you may contact Ricardo Guerrero, Tel: (52-55) 3601-1650, r.guerrero@unesco.org.

For further information on the content and objectives of the conference, or on UNESCO’s activities in ethics, you may contact Josepha Montana, j.montana@unesco.org.

Ethics and Bioethics -- Our common future, Our planet, Our oasis

A Role for UNESCO Assuring the Ethical Treatment of Laboratory Animals

Source: "ANIMAL RESEARCH: Long-Fought Compromise Reached On European Animal Rules," Gretchen Vogel, Science 24 September 2010: Vol. 329. no. 5999, pp. 1588 - 1589

The European Parliament gave its final approval on 8 September to a new directive spelling out rules governing animal research in academic and industrial labs. The directive will take effect through laws enacted by each member country of the European Union. The rules cover research with all vertebrates and extend coverage for the first time to cephalopods, which include octopi and squid; all research using such animals must pass an ethical evaluation that takes into account possible alternatives and refinements that could improve the welfare of the animal subjects. The directive also sets out for the first time minimum housing and care standards for dozens of the most common animals used in research. The previous E.U. rules on animal research date from 1986, and officials have been working on the new regulations since 2001.

The NAS Guide for the Care

 and Use of Laboratory Animals

The United States, with a research program comparable in size to that of the European Union, has a complex system of rules governing animal research in laboratories. There are separate rules for non-human primates and other mammals. (There are also rules for research involving livestock outside the laboratory and animals involved in research in the wild.)

UNESCO is the only United Nations Organization with charter authorizing general oversight for science; it has a broad program dealing with the natural sciences as well as a program dealing with the ethics of science and technology. However, other U.N. agencies -- notably WHO, FAO and the UNDP -- also deal with research that involves laboratory animals.

Perhaps this is a time in which UNESCO could play a useful role by convening a working group of U.N. Agencies to discuss the role of the United Nations system in promoting rules that assure the ethical treatment of laboratory animals. Such a group might provide a useful service to the world by creating an online observatory of such rules that exist in individual nations and in regional organizations such as the European Union.

John Daly
The opinions expressed in this posting are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent those of Americans for UNESCO or any other organization.

Photo from awionline.org via the NYU website

A Comment on the Ethics of Research: A Role for UNESCO

For a couple of decades I was involved in the management of grants programs that funded research in developing nations. One of the key issues in the management of such a program was assuring that the research we funded be conducted ethically.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that different societies have different views on ethics. For example, it is generally agreed that research involving human subjects should only be done with informed consent. However, different societies have differing views as to who should provide that consent. In the United States, the informed consent normally comes from the subject himself/herself. In some African societies, the consent must be communal, often provided by a village chief. There are also differences as to the age at which a subject is thought able to give informed consent, and who has the right to give consent for those deemed unable due to age or other condition.

Given such differences, our practice was to have research protocols reviewed by institutions in all of the countries involved in a specific project. That was often difficult in that institutions in countries that do not do much research were often poorly equipped to do effective ethical review. The capacity to do so depends on the existence of institutional review boards, clear statements of ethical standards, and people experienced in the ethical review of research. There were also questions as to which questions could be delegated, and which we had to directly assure ethical conduct.

Some of the ethical concerns involved in research ethics are:

• Ethical treatment of human subjects of biomedical, social science and other kinds of research
• Ethics of research involving human reproductive biology (e.g. research involving stem cells)
• Ethical treatment of non-human primates in laboratory research and/or in research on wild animals
• Ethical treatment of other laboratory animals
• Ethical treatment of livestock involved in field studies
• Ethical treatment of wild animals (other than primates) involved in field studies
• Safety of researchers (consideration of radiation risks, exposure to pathogens, exposure to noxious substances, etc.)
• Safe containment of human pathogens (to protect the public from accidental releases)
• Safe containment of animal or plant pathogens
• Ethical conduct of research involving recombinant DNA
• Protection of endangered species that might be affected by the research
• Ethical concern for environmental risks consequent to the research beyond those already mentioned (e.g. the risk of escape of exotic species which might damage agriculture)
• Safety in the international shipment of potentially dangerous materials (e.g. radioactive materials or samples that might contain pests or pathogens)
• The treatment of data collected during research (e.g. protection of confidentiality, appropriate sharing for scientific review)

UNESCO has a program focusing on the Ethics of Science and Technology, with an International Bioethics Committee, and Intergovernmental Bioethics Committee, and a World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology. The program and its international bodies do not seem to have taken much interest in the ethical conduct of research as described above. UNESCO has an affiliated network of University Chairs in Bioethics which could be the basis for an expanded role research ethics.

UNESCO could, and I believe should play an important role:

• as a forum for the discussion of ethical issues involved in the conduct of scientific research and technology development;
• as a clearinghouse for information on best practices in assuring the ethical conduct of research;
• as an agent helping developing countries develop the capacity to assure the ethical conduct of research conducted within their borders; 
• as the central UN science agency, in convening a working group of WHO, UNFPA, UNAIDS, FAO, UNIDO and other UN agencies to discuss research ethics; and
• as a legitimate neutral party to help in parties come to agreement on ethical standards for multinational research projects.

John Daly

(The opinions expressed above are mine, and do not necessarily reflect those of Americans for UNESCO or any other organization.)

Expansion of COMEST

UNESCO's World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST) is an advisory body and forum of reflection. Since it was created in 1998 it has been responsible for studies of the ethics of energy, of the teaching of ethics, and of the ethics of nanotechnology.

COMEST is managed within the Social and Human Sciences Program of UNESCO, which includes a number of ethics activities including those of the International Bioethics Committee and the Intergovernmental Bioethics Committee.

The Executive Board of UNESCO will in September consider proposals to authorize COMEST to undertake the preparation of a draft declaration on Climate Change and to expand COMEST and its budget in order to undertake the climate change work in in the context of its other major commitments, to advise UNESCO on programs in science ethics, the ethics of nanotechnologies and environmental ethics teaching.

There would seem to be important ethical questions with respect to the generation and utilization of scientific knowledge with respect to climate change and with respect to the technological basis of greenhouse gas emissions, to technologies that might be useful in reducing antropogenic climate change, and with respect to technologies that might be useful in ameliorating the impacts of climate change that does occur.

One wonders wether the proposed declaration is merely poorly named, or whether COMEST is really planning to look at the ethics of a global climatic phenomenon. If the latter, would that not be better left to other international bodies focusing on the environment and climate change such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations Environmental Program, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature or the World Meteorological Organization.

The documents before the Executive Board suggest expanding membership of COMEST appointed by the Director General of UNESCO from 18 to 36 members, while removing from COMEST 10 ex oficio members from international organizations. It is not clear that the Director General is likely to select individuals who would bring more to COMEST than the current ex officio members. Nor is it clear that a 36 member COMEST would be more capable than a 28 member COMEST.

The documents also suggest more frequent meetings. Would it not be possible to save the expense by increasing use of the Internet for communication among members of the Commission, including use of video conferencing if needed?

One may also question whether the added budget requested for COMEST and the Climate Change Declaration might not be better spent in other ways. For example, UNESCO's flagship social sciences program, the Management of Social Transitions Program, might utilize a budget increase to study how social science could be brought to bear by policy makers to reduce antropogenic climate change or to improve social response for the amelioration of the impacts of climate change. Alternatively, the funds might be used within the Natural Science Programs to further international scientific cooperation in the study of the factors causing and the rate of climate change.

John Daly

(The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Americans for UNESCO.)

Some Readings About UNESCO's Ethics Program

The Avicenna Prize Medal
The Avicenna Prize is awarded every other year
for achievements in the ethics of science.

UNESCO has for several decades sought to build and reinforce linkages among ethicists, scientists, policy-makers and civil society to assist its member nations in enacting sound and reasoned policies on ethical issues in science and technology. UNESCO pursues its ethical mandate in primarily in the fields of

• Bioethics and
• Ethics of Science and Technology

There are also cross sectoral programs, such as the work in ethical education of children which resulted in the production of a book, Learning to Live Together: An Intercultural and Interfaith Programme for Ethics Education.

The Bureau of Public Information has produced some short bulletins describing aspects of UNESCO's ethics work:

• UNESCO and ethics: introduction
• Ethics and education
• Environmental ethics

Of fundamental importance are three UNESCO Declarations dealing with ethics:

• The Universal Declaration On The Human Genome And Human Rights
• The International Declaration on Human Genetic Data
  
• The Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights

The Eubios Ethics Institute provides a useful webpage on UNESCO's ethics resources with many links to UNESCO documents.

Editorial: Possible Fields for UNESCO Ethical Instruments

UNESCO is holding a special cycle of four ‘60 Minutes’ meetings in February 2009 to consider examines it might take to advance ethical standards, guidelines and principles in four areas: the environment and climate change, education systems, information society and human cloning. The effort is apparently under the direction of Henk Tenhaven, Some of the materials in support of that work are:

• UNESCO and ethics: introduction
• Environmental Ethics
• UNESCO and info-ethics (I can't find this online, but send me an email and I will send you a copy).

In support of that effort I present two ideas that UNESCO staff and advisors might explore in the area of ethics of science and technology.

A Convention on the Ethical Conduct of Research

There might be a need for work on the standards, guidelines and principles for the ethical conduct of research.

In the United States there are a large number of standards and guidelines for researcher that include:

• The ethical treatment of human subjects
• The ethical treatment of non-human primates
• The ethical treatment of other laboratory animals (not including rats and fish)
• The ethical treatment of livestock
• The ethical treatmenet of wild animals
• The containment of hazardous materials
• The containment of human pathogens
• The containment of animal pathogens
• The containment of exotic species
• The containment of genetically altered organisms
  
• The international shipment of plants and plant materials
• The international shipment of hazardous materials
• The public availability of experimental data
• Fraud and deceit in the proposals for research funding or in the description of research results
• Plagerism
  

For many years I managed programs which financed collaborative research between scientists in the United States and scientists in developing nations. It was my experience that many developing countries did not have strong institutions to deal with one or more of these ethical issues.

An example that seems humorous in retrospect may illustrate the problem. One of the programs on which I worked involved studies of the mosquito vectors of malaria. In such research it is often necessary to use "human baits" -- people who sit outside and let mosquitos bite them so that the mosquitos can be captured and studied. Many people serving as human baits come down with malaria. In the peer review of an early proposal for a study under the program, the reviewers asked about the protection and treatment of the people involved as human baits. We contacted the proponents of the project who responded that they would follow the WHO guidelines on the subject. The proposal was approved, and a series of other proposals were subsequently submitted and approved, all of which relied on the WHO guidelines. It was only later that we discovered that there were no WHO guidelines for the ethical treatment of people serving as human baits in mosquito vector research.

International research collaboration has been increasing for decades. All such collaborations in principle require that the research be conducted in accord with the ethical standards of the countries in which each of the researchers works. Moreover, the research must pass the review panels and procedures institutionalized by the countries involved.

There are a number of intergovernmental organizations that relate to this situation including UNESCO, FAO and WHO. Of course other intergovernmental organizations or programs that fund research, such as the World Bank and other international financial institutions and the UNDP are also affected. UNESCO may have the broadest mandate among these to deal with the ethical conduct of research, especially under the auspices of its Commission on the Ethics of Science and Technology.

Perhaps UNESCO might convene a meeting with representatives of the relevant intergovernmental agencies, working scientists and experts in the ethics of the conduct of research to consider whether an international instrument for the harmonization of guidelines, standards principles in this field might be useful.

The Ethical Responsibilities of Governments to Support Regulatory Research

Another area that might be explored is the responsibilities of governments to carry out research to enable appropriate regulation of emerging technologies. It seems to me that if industrial R&D is heavily funded within a country in areas such as new materials, biotechnology, nanotechnology, or pharmacology then the government of that country should have a responsibility to fund the research required to establish a basis for suitable regulation of the commercial application of the technologies. While UNIDO might have a role to play in this field, it seems to me that regulatory science is not really under the jurisdiction of any other UN agency. Therefore UNESCO might quite appropriately lead in exploring whether some instrument might be appropriate to require signatory nations to allocate public resources to regulatory research in an appropriate ratio to the national Gross Expenditures on Research and Development of emerging technologies.

Editorial: A Concern Raised by Change in U.S. Members of COMEST

Robert P. George, a U.S. citizen, is currently a member of UNESCO's World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST). Midge Decter, another U.S. citizen, is now listed among the former members of the Commission.

The Commission, founded in 1998 with a Bureau provided by the Social and Human Sciences program of UNESCO, is an advisory body and forum of reflection composed of 18 independent experts. "The Commission is mandated to formulate ethical principles that could provide decision-makers with criteria other than purely economic."

Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, where he lectures on constitutional interpretation, civil liberties and philosophy of law. According to Wikipedia, he "is a prominent proponent of 'New Natural Law Theory,' a distinctive approach to moral, political, and legal philosophy that views moral truths as accessible to rational inquiry, and postulates as the criterion of sound ethical judgment the integral directiveness of various basic and irreducible aspects of human fulfillment, such as knowledge, friendship, critical aesthetic appreciation, and personal authenticity and integrity." He currently serves on the U.S. President's Council on Bioethics and "is involved in pro-life and pro-family advocacy."

Midge Decter is described by UNESCO as an author and editor. She is also a member of the board of trustees of the Heritage Foundation, the board of Security Policy, Institute on Religion and Public Life, Philadelphia Society and is chairperson of the Clare Booth Luce Foundation.

Editor's comment: These are the only two people from the United States who have served on COMEST with the exception of ex officio members. Both are very conservative politically; both have ties to the Bush administration. While Professor George appears to be a distinguished legal expert with a strong interest in a number of ethical issues, neither seems expert in the ethics of science and technology.

The most recent meeting of COMEST, for example, dealt with the following topics:

• Environmental ethics, including ethical implications of climate change;
• Science ethics, including particularly the implementation of the 1974 Recommendation on the Status of Scientific Researchers;
• Nanotechnology ethics, and;
• Information ethics.

These are very complex issues and COMEST is expected to deal with them with deep understanding of the science and technology as well as with the applicable ethical principles and theories.

It is the responsibility of UNESCO to appoint the members of this Commission. It should do so seeking first to assure that the individuals are not only qualified professionals, but global leaders in their understanding of the ethics of science and technology. Its secondary responsibility is to assure that the Commission as a whole represents a spectrum of philosophical positions so that its recommendations are not unduly biased toward any one point of view.

The appointment in recent years of two U.S. citizens who have such close ties to the Bush administration and such apparent lack of expertise in the ethics of science and technology, taken together with the lack of appointments of U.S. citizens prior to the reentry of the United States into UNESCO, makes me suspect that there may have been undue deference by UNESCO's Secretariat to governmental representatives in the appointments of members to this Commission. If so, that would be most regrettable!

It is the responsibility of the U.S. Department of State to pressure UNESCO resist undue political pressures from the governments of member states. While the U.S. government, in cooperation with the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO, can be very helpful to UNESCO in helping to identify Americans with the necessary qualifications to serve on UNESCO's advisory bodies, it should do so with considerable tact and diplomacy. It should certainly refrain from pressuring UNESCO to appoint unqualified persons because of their close ties with the administration in power. If the State Department indeed pressured UNESCO to appoint these two people to COMEST, that too would be most regrettable!

John Daly
(The opinions expressed above are those of the author alone, and do not necessarily represent those of Americans for UNESCO.)

Ethics around the World

UNESCO has conducted a series of ethics conferences in various countries in co-operation with the National Commissions for UNESCO in those countries. The conferences disseminated information about UNESCO's program on the ethics of science and technology and also helped establish contacts with experts and interested parties in the host countries.

Click here for a list of the conferences.

UNESCO and the Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean of the World Health Organization (WHO/EMRO) have a joint bioethics initiative in the Arab and Eastern Mediterranean Region. The UNESCO Cairo office (UCO) is the focal point for bioethics and ethics of science and technology projects for UNESCO’s Member States in the Arab region.

Click here to transfer to the Initiative's website.

UNESCO also has a program assisting the development of independent, multidisciplinary and pluralist ethics committees at national, regional, local or institutional levels where such committees had not previously been established. That program has been assisting African nations.

Click here to transfer to the Program website.

Editorial: Ethics and Neurosciences and Cognitive Sciences

Ethics of Science and Technology:
explorations of the frontiers of science and ethics
A collection of selected publications by
the first two laureates of the Avicenna Prize for Ethics in Science

Henry Greely has an editorial in Science magazine this week titled "On Neuroethics". Henry Greely is a Professor of Law at Stanford University who has long worked on legal and ethical issues in the biosciences.

Neuroscience and cognitive science have grown greatly. For example, on 3 November 2007, the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting is expected to draw more than 30,000 scientists to discuss brains. New knowledge has begun to spill out from the laboratory into society and as a result new ethical, legal, and social concerns are being created.

"The brains of "normal" people in some imaging studies yield clinically significant findings disconcertingly often: 8 to 10% of the time in some studies. What kind of information and follow-up do we owe those people? Other studies may have military implications: Suppose brain stimulation created an indefinitely awake and alert soldier or pilot? Will neuroscience be a new source of dual-use technologies such as those we worry about for biological or chemical warfare? Other researchers are studying "the neuroscience of ethics," as philosophers and neuroscientists explore how brains make decisions when confronted with moral dilemmas. The implications are unclear, but the work is fascinating."

Last year the Neuroethics Society was created as an interdisciplinary group of scholars, scientists and clinicians who share an interest in the social, legal, ethical and policy implications of advances in neuroscience. More generally,the growing interconnections between moral philosophy and research that draws upon neuroscience, developmental psychology, and evolutionary biology.requires serious attention from a broad interdisciplinary perspective.

Greely emphasizes that more work has to be done to develop Neuroethics:

In these days of tight federal budgets, money is hard to get. But to fund science without supporting work on its social consequences will ensure that the neuroscience revolution brings far too much social pain and chaos along with its scientific and medical breakthroughs.

UNESCO held a meeting in 1995 on the topic of Ethics and Neurosciences. Moreover, within UNESCO's Social and Human Sciences Program, there is an Ethics program with substantial programs on:

• The ethics of science and technology.
• Bioethics

The ethics of neuroscience and cognitive science and their expanding applications and technologies raises concerns that would benefit not only from discussion within the United States, but in an international forum. Not only could multicultural perspectives help to clarify the ethical issues, but would help to avoid and/or resolve intercultural misunderstandings and conflict.

UNESCO is the obvious venue for such discussions. It is to be hoped that the U.S. National Commission will strongly recommend to the State Department that the permanent delegation recommend UNESCO become more important in the evolving debates about the ethics of neuroscience and cognitive science.

Ethics and human rights in information society

13-14 September 2007, Strasbourg

A European regional meeting on the ethical dimensions of the information society is being organized by the French Commission for UNESCO in cooperation with UNESCO and the Council of Europe. It will be the third of a cycle of regional UNESCO conferences on the ethical dimensions of the information society, and a contribution to the implementation of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and to the Internet Governance Forum.

The purpose of this meeting will be to discuss and identify the issues considered to be priorities for the European region and to raise stakeholders’ awareness of the ethical issues of information and communication technologies and usages. It will also aim at making a contribution to the UNESCO code of ethics project that was elaborated and discussed during the two previous regional conferences and also in reaching conclusions and operational recommendations intended for all stakeholders.

Bioethics at UNESCO

The UNESCO Bioethics Program was created in 1993. It is managed as part of the Social and Human Sciences Program, and supports the International Bioethics Committee. In 1997 the General Conference adopted the Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights, the only international instrument in the field of bioethics, which was endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1998.

The UNESCO Bioethics Program website

UNESCO Bioethics Guides:

The program has published three guides, directed at those managing bioethics committees.

Guide #1 Establishing Bioethics Committees

Guide #2, Bioethics Committees at Work: Procedures and Policies

Guide #3, Educating Bioethics Committees

Also of interest from UNESCO:

A Cross-Cultural Introduction to Bioethics, Darryl R.J. Macer, Ph.D. (Editor), Eubios Ethics Institute, 2006

A list of UNESCO bioethics materials
(All of which can be downloaded free of charge from the list.)

Fourteenth Session of the International Bioethics Committee (IBC)
Nairobi, Kenya, 17-19 May 2007

UNESCO Survey on Infoethics Released

"Ethical Implications of Emerging Technologies"
A UNESCO survey on INFOethics

Cover of the publication, copyright UNESCO

The survey was prepared by Mary Rundle and Chris Conely of the NGO Geneva Net Dialogue at UNESCO's request.

In presenting the results, an introductory story is first provided of how the technologies covered relate to one another. Infoethics goals are then presented. Subsequently, for each technological trend surveyed, the report contains a short chapter drafted in lay terms to provide an overview of the relevant technology and to highlight ramifications and concerns. The infoethics analysis is then summarized and the story of the emerging technologies revisited. Finally, the report offers recommendations on ways to advance infoethics goals in anticipation of these oncoming technologies.

The ethical, legal and societal implications of ICTs are one of the three main priorities of UNESCO’s Information for All Programme and UNESCO was recently designated as the Facilitator for the implementation of Action Line C10 “Ethical Dimensions of the Information Society” of the Geneva Action Plan adopted by the World Summit on the Information Society.

Source:
Gridtoday.com

Related Links:
UNESCO INFOethics Congresses
Geneva Plan of Action