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Uncertainty over the future of the International Bioethics Committee (IBC) of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) is likely to be resolved at a meeting of the UN agency's 58-member executive board this week.

The IBC was set up in 1994 with the task of drafting the first UN text governing science and human rights, the “universal declaration on the human genome and human rights”. But that remit ended with the adoption of the declaration last November by the 186 member states of Unesco.

At the same time, the declaration gave the IBC the new role of overseeing the implementation of the text's provisions, a set of broad principles affirming the need to protect the individual against genetic discrimination while upholding the principle of scientific freedom.

Member states have now rejected a Unesco proposal that the IBC, which is made up of independent experts appointed by Unesco director-general Federico Mayor, be replaced with a committee of both experts and civil servants from member states.

Under a compromise to be submitted to the executive board, the 36-member IBC will remain independent, while a separate committee representing member states will be set up in parallel. But how this arrangement will work in practice is far from obvious.

One new activity for the IBC, for example, will be to release ‘opinions’ on ethical issues. But it is not clear whether the IBC will be able to make these public immediately, or whether they will first have to be approved by the second committee.

In negotiations this month, the compromise proposal won broad agreement, with support, for example, from France, the United Kingdom, Japan and Israel — as well as the United States, which is not a member of Unesco. Germany favoured a political committee, however, apparently on the grounds that this would allow greater control.

Meanwhile, Unesco's executive committee will also be asked to approve a proposal to create a separate World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology, which would consider ethical issues in areas outside biomedicine. The commission would be chaired by Vigdis Finnbogadottir, a former president of Iceland.

Under preliminary proposals, the commission's goal would be to promote debate among scientists, intellectuals, public and private decision-makers, and the public on the ethical and risk issues in such areas as energy, the use of freshwater resources and the information society.