The French Parliamentary Committee started the first readings of the new bioethics law on September 10, prior to the public sessions scheduled to be held on September 24th.
For this event, Alliance VITA has published an Understanding Bioethics (n ° 49) to give a summary of the real consequences at stake in this new law.
Tugdual Derville, Alliance VITA’s General Delegate, and author of “Time for Mankind” (published by Plon, 2016) deplores:
“We are facing two problems for a critical analysis of this law.
The first one is the law’s exclusive focus on extending access to artificial procreation techniques, the so-called ‘ART for all’, notably by deleting the criterion of infertility. The vast majority of the public remains ignorant that other dikes will be breached, to the point of manufacturing transgenic or chimerical embryos.
Secondly, these exaggerated distortions are misappropriating time and money away from Parliament, medicine and health insurance reimbursements, instead of addressing two bioethics challenges that society is facing. Although generally overlooked by public health policies, the first one is for therapy and prevention of medical infertility, which concerns a growing number of French citizens. The other challenge is the fight against eugenics. Sadly, France holds the record for prenatal selection of human beings, illustrating our attitude towards the most vulnerable. It is scandalous that this bioethics law completely ignores these two urgent priorities. In the coming days, we will be contacting all the deputies, prior to mobilizing efforts for a massive citizen march on Sunday, October 6 in Paris, united under the common banner entitled “March for the Children!”.
Note: Three representatives from Alliance VITA were auditioned by the special commission on August 27th.
