munich

The European Parliament wants to have more influence over the debate on bioethics in Europe, and would like ethical committees to be more concerned about the effects of biotechnological research on society.

An amendment to the European Commission's draft directive on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions, which was approved last week at its first parliamentary reading (see above), urges the commission to establish a committee on the ethics of biotechnology. This would report to parliament annually on all ethical questions relating to biotechnology. Details of its responsibilities have yet to be defined.

The proposal is closely connected to a recent parliamentary resolution extending to the end of the year the mandate of the commission's existing Group of Advisors on the Ethical Implications of Biotechnology (GAEIB), which was due to expire later this month.

The resolution called for the commission to renew and clarify GAEIB's role, in close consultation with parliament. It formally commended the group, which was set up in 1991, for contributing to the public debate on bioethics through its series of reports. But it also argued that “too much attention has been paid to the interests of research and not enough to the possible effects on society”.

The commission is likely to recommend to parliament that the committee demanded by the draft directive should be closely connected with, or identical to, GAEIB, but details have yet to be formulated.

Noëlle Lenoir, a member of the French constitutional court who chairs GAEIB, says that the group would welcome what she sees as a natural expansion of its role to cover ethical issues relating to patenting of biotechnological inventions.