[Press Release] National Consultations on Bioethics in France: Alliance VITA’s Agenda

Human procreation must not be regulated by ultra-liberal nor state-controlled markets. As the National Consultations on Bioethics opens in France, Alliance VITA warns of the risks involved if an ultra-liberal or state-controlled procreation market would be authorized.

Alliance VITA’s General Delegate, Tugdual Derville warns: “This market which threatens the humans has been fostered by industrializing reproduction techniques. Women and men are regarded as a workforce supposed to produce raw materials (such as oocytes, sperm, and uterus) to create babies on demand, and even “customized” babies“.

Alliance VITA is expert on bioethical issues and will remain actively involved throughout the Bioethics Consultations for all the issues currently being debated: (practicing manipulations, or genetic modifications on the human embryo, artificial intelligence, end-of-life, organ donations, eugenics and disabilities).VITA has been granted an official hearing at the French National Consultative Ethics Committee.

Herewith, Alliance VITA is launching 3 initiatives to invite the public to get involved in the debate on these issues:

• Organizing a national petition to be sent to the French President, protesting against the rapid expansion of the ultra-liberal procreation market and the emergence of a state-owned industry of human reproduction and human body products.
• Dedicating a website throughout this time frame to follow, analyze, and comment on the various stages of the bioethics consultations. Key topics which are too often overlooked in the discussion will be proposed, especially those involving medical causes and treatment for infertility; as well as accepting and giving support to disabled persons.
• Inviting individuals who have decided to protect life and human dignity (individuals, couples, and care-givers facing infertility, disability, illness, end-of-life …) to give their testimony for more balance in a debate which is too often monopolized by those with transgressive claims.

Currently a record number of people (7,000) are attending Alliance Vita’s 2018 Bioethics Conferences training sessions [2], which began on Monday January 15th in 140 cities throughout France and abroad. The sessions will continue for 3 successive Monday evenings on January 22nd and 29th, and February 5th.

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[1] Alliance VITA was founded in 1993, during the first bioethics laws, and has been active for the past 25 years to insist on the fact that biotechnology must be employed for protecting those facing life’s hardships, while respecting human dignity, especially in the stages of life where human beings are the most vulnerable (embryonic stage, birth, disease, disability, old age or at the end-of-life).

[2] The public is cordially invited to attend Alliance VITA’s training sessions via the Bioethics Conferences. They are currently being held simultaneously in 120 French cities and 12 countries: Abu Dhabi, Germany, Belgium, United States, Italy, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Mexico, Nigeria, Portugal, United Kingdom, and Switzerland. Alliance VITA proposes a time of reflection on important issues related to the respect of human life and dignity via conferences from experts, philosophers, economists, doctors, and sociologists and from those who are at grass roots operating on VITA’s crisis help-lines and listening services.