How can human rights be safeguarded in the face of scientific and technological developments in the biomedical field? The Committee on Bioethics of the Council of Europe will discuss the challenges ahead at an international conference being held on 24 and 25 October in Strasbourg to mark the 20th anniversary of the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine (known as the ‟Oviedo Convention”).
The aim of the conference will be to consider the relevance of the principles set out in the Convention and to outline the main points of a Council of Europe ‟action plan” for 2018-2019.
The topics to be discussed include:
- the case law of the ECHR;
- the challenges posed by changes in practices for the rights of children and elderly persons, and equal access to healthcare;
- developments in the areas of genetics and genomics, brain technologies, information technologies, NBIC (nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science) and Big data.