Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-04-09-Speech-3-367"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20030409.7.3-367"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, first of all, following the example of previous speakers, I should like to congratulate our rapporteur, Mr Liese, for the high level of contact which he has maintained, right from the beginning, with all the parties concerned and, of course, with the various nominal rapporteurs, in order to produce this report, which represents an overall balance. This compromise was difficult to achieve, between the advocates of subsidiarity, the supporters of ethics at any price and all those, including myself, who want to respond to the expectations and hopes placed in us by millions of patients in Europe, without, however, hindering the development of the European biotechnology sector.
Indeed, thanks to the grafting of corneas, heart valves, bones, tendons and skin, the lives of patients are actually prolonged and improved. Just to give one example, repairing the damage caused by major burns involves nearly twenty thousand European citizens every year, while 60 000 diabetics had to have amputations in 2002 because of the lack of any effective procedure for reconstructing skin. We must be clear about this: all these people awaiting treatment will either not be treated or will be badly treated if tomorrow the European Parliament adopts a moralistic stance and prohibits, directly or indirectly, research into stem cells, embryos and germ gene therapy. That is the reason why the majority of the Liberal group is firmly opposed to a good thirty of the amendments, in particular Amendments Nos 30, 31, 36, 37, 46 and 50, but I do not propose to list all of them here.
One fundamental reminder is necessary: we are concerned here with a public-health issue, based on Article 152 of the Treaty. It is therefore a matter of quality criteria, approval standards, qualifications, staff training, traceability tests, and the setting up of a European network bringing together the registers of national tissue banks. This is what lies at the heart of the proposal, and I have heard very little about it, since ethical issues have overtaken it. Nevertheless, at the committee stage we did reach a compromise on organ donations, on the highly sensitive question of voluntary and non-remunerated donation, on umbilical cord blood donations and on fair access to the various treatments for all patients.
We are determined not to let all these advances be reduced to nothing here because some people are confused between the European Parliament and the Council of Europe. It is not Europe’s objective or ambition to harmonise ethics, and having a conscience in matters of science has never treated anyone. For all these reasons, the Liberal group, in self-defence, reserves the right to vote against this report and to go back to the Commission’s balanced proposal."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples