REPORT ON THE STATE OF APPLICATION OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES TO HUMAN LIFE 2021
The VI mandate of the National Council of Ethics for the Life Sciences (CNECV), which took office in July 2021, presents its first Report on the State of Application of New Technologies to Human Life, in compliance with the provisions of paragraph c) of Article 3.1 of Law No. 24/2009 of 29 May 2009, which established the CNECV as an advisory body functioning adjunct to the Portuguese Parliament. In addition to the formal fulfillment of legal provisions, the Report's main objective is to contribute to an ethical reflection that accompanies some of the most recent scientific-technological advances in their human implications
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:justify;text-indent: 42.55pt;line-height:133%"><span style="font-family: "Avenir Next LT Pro", sans-serif; text-indent: 42.55pt;">In the broad field of life sciences, the past two years have been indelibly marked by the still current COVID-19 pandemic (coronavirus disease 2019), declared as such on 20 March 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO), caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) and which has extended through successive variants of the virus, affecting the world dramatically. It has given rise to the most serious global health crisis since the 1918 influenza pandemic and has triggered an economic and social crisis whose heavy consequences have been accumulating and are likely to persist for a long time, with effects that are still largely unpredictable.</span><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:justify;text-indent: 42.55pt;line-height:133%"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Avenir Next LT Pro", sans-serif;">The CNECV issued two Statements on the main ethical issues in the context of social isolation and compulsory confinement and in a scenario of potential unavailability of resources, arising from the covid-19 pandemic: on 1 April 2020, with the position statement "Public health emergency situation by the Covid-19 pandemic: relevant ethical aspects". Subsequently, and in view of some technological solutions, created to respond globally to the spread of contagions, through an ecosystem of shared data of individual location, it decided to issue a position statement on "Digital mobile applications to control the transmission of covid-19: relevant ethical aspects", on 29 June 2020.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:6.0pt;text-align:justify;text-indent: 42.55pt;line-height:133%"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Avenir Next LT Pro", sans-serif;">The Covid-19 pandemic has also been the most prominent stage for the development of various technologies, which, although not effectively unprecedented, have been driven in this context of health crisis, with strong impact on human life. This Report on the State of Application of New Technologies to Human Life focuses, therefore, on the technologies driven by the pandemic. The CNECV, true to its nature and the exercise of its specific mission, necessarily focuses on human issues arising from the progress of technologies and assessed from an ethical perspective, which is also the scope and approach of technologies driven by the pandemic.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:4.8pt;text-align:justify;text-indent: 42.55pt;line-height:133%;mso-pagination:none;border:none;mso-padding-alt:31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt 31.0pt; mso-border-shadow:yes"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Avenir Next LT Pro", sans-serif;">In this context, the CNECV has tried to select some of the aspects of intervention of technologies in human life that have been particularly developed, discussed and applied during this time of pandemic, briefly describing the evolving reality and focusing on new paradigms in formation. Recommendations will also be proposed as contributions to future public policies that refer to the highlighted themes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>There are no available attachments.
