The National March for Science in Rome, Italy on April 22, 2017. Credit: Jacopo Landi/NurPhoto via Getty Images.
It was timely that the theme chosen by the United Nations to celebrate the latest Human Rights Day, in December 2020, was ‘Recover Better - Stand Up for Human Rights’, and that the message focused on the need for human rights to be put at the centre of recovery efforts.
The pandemic is aggravating discrimination, inequality, poverty and misery all over the world. The emergency laws have had consequences for civil and political rights, suspending elections, canceling assemblies, restricting the possibility to demonstrate in the open, stifling criticism aimed at governments. Global solidarity will need to become a central component of the recovery. There is a structural need to reaffirm the importance of human rights in re-building after the disruption caused by the virus.
But the pandemic has also highlighted the need to make a crucial addition to the list of recognized human rights. Since the early days of the discovery of the new coronavirus, science and scientists have been at the centre of the public discourse. But very rarely science has been recognized as a universal human right. And yet it is.
Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states that “Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits”.
Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognizes the right of everyone to “take part in cultural life, enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications, benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author”.
In April 2020, a committee of experts at the UN adopted a “General Comment on Science” to further clarify the elements of the right, states’ obligations to uphold it, and the role civil society could play in the scientific enterprise. Among other things, countries must devise national plans for science, invest in research and promote scientific education from an early age.
In many countries, during the past year, scientists have been presented as yet another elitist group that wants to impose decisions taken by the few eluding public participation, scrutiny or approval. Too often we have seen appeals to trust the “man at the helm” rather than the work of thousands of people who have dedicated their professional lives to researching facts and sharing their findings with their colleagues to pursue theoretical as well as concrete goals. These governmental manipulations or misrepresentations are violations of human rights.
A universal right to science means that everybody has the right to participate in science. Here again, the pandemic is teaching lessons. The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) co-leads COVAX, that ensures access to the COVID-19 tools accelerator, which coordinates a global risk-sharing mechanism for pooled procurement and equitable distribution of the new vaccines. COVAX is a concrete example of how the right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications can be respected the world over through innovative partnerships involving institutional and private donors. Hopefully there will be a willingness on the part of governments, regional and international organizations, academia and companies to continue in this collaborative effort for the common good.
Recognizing science as a fundamental human right would force legislators and the judiciary to weigh it differently against other rights. Take Italy, for example.
Italian politics has rarely played a proactive or supportive role in protecting or promoting science. It implemented the EU directive 2010/63 on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes with very prohibitive measures that have inhibited that type of research. While donating human bodies to research could, in part, also reduce the use of animals in educational research activities and training, until last year medical students who wanted to specialize in surgery could not be trained using Italian cadavers.
Since 2004, research on embryonic stem cells from supernumerary blastocysts has been impeded: an Italian law dictates that those early embryos - created during medical assisted procreation, but not implanted – must be preserved for years, but cannot be donated to scientific research. Since the adoption of the EU 2001 Directive on Genetically Modified Organisms, GMO plants can be studied in Italian labs, but cannot be cultivated for experimental purposes in open fields, and the same is true for new breeding techniques. Research that uses CRISPR-Cas9 on plants is in a limbo.
Genome editing in other fields is less restricted - as shown by an experimental genome editing therapy pioneered last December at the Bambin Gesù hospital in Rome - but not sufficiently supported. These choices show that science is not accepted as a human right on par with others.
Just like the right to free speech and assembly, the right to receive medical assistance, to work, or the right not to be discriminated against due to skin colour, science must be fully respected by all and for all. For science to become an integral part of our societies, it needs to be recognised for what it has been for the past 60 years: a universal human right.
