Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-04-23-Speech-1-120"
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"en.20070423.17.1-120"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I can say that I agree with the rapporteur and therefore am also in favour of the two points included in Amendments 3 and 17, in line with the opinion of the Committee on Legal Affairs, as well as all the amendments proposed by that committee.
Someone said that they did not understand why this debate was so heated. It is heated because it has to answer two important questions. The first one is, 'Does the end justify the means?' I recall that in Article 2 of the Oviedo Convention on bioethics we wrote that the interests and welfare of the human being shall prevail over the sole interest of society or science. The first question is therefore as follows: ‘In view of the fact that science is capable of crossing new boundaries, should we always do what science tells us? Does the fact that something can be done make it right, or is there an ethical rule to say whether it is right?’
The second question is as follows: ‘The human being takes precedence, but what is a human being?’ We can no longer ignore this question, which is of momentous, planetary importance, because the whole human rights doctrine, from which everyone claims to draw inspiration, turns on this one point: ‘What is a human being?’ When we talk about embryos, we need to answer the question of whether an embryo is a human being or not. This is not merely an ethical question, but rather a legal and political one, even more than it is an ethical one. It is not a quibble, either, but a serious question, and it should at least make us hesitate for a moment when we come to vote.
Since we have already decided that the Member States can do as they see fit, I do not see why a different view of things should be imposed on them through a European regulation. At any rate, I hope my speech will make my fellow Members think carefully about a complex issue that involves human beings – not just those human beings who are hoping for new kinds of treatment, but also those whose bodies and very lives might be sacrificed for the sake of others."@en1
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