NGO for UN life sciences technology evaluation body

NGO for UN life sciences technology evaluation body

Gireesh Chandra Prasad
Express Pharma Pulse
January 22, 2004

Canada-based NGO "etc group", which addresses international governance issues and corporate power at global and regional levels, will propose creation of a United Nations body to evaluate the emerging medical, biotech and pharmaceutical technologies so that 'socially irresponsible technologies' like inheritable genetic modification do not enter the market.

etc group executive director Pat Roy Mooney told Express Pharma Pulse on the sidelines of the ongoing World Social Forum conference here on January 18 that the organisation will submit a national draft in April to the UN, the WHO and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) which will also recommend a commission under the UN to monitor technology distribution, access, benefit sharing and archiving endangered technologies. He said the body would monitor the development of technologies from initial stages so that the research progresses in the right direction. There would also be an exit strategy if it the project is not feasible.

Earlier, addressing a conference on plant and human genetic technologies, Oakland-based Centre for...