UNESCO's Draft Bioethics Declaration Gets Ripped

On June 24, UNESCO issued its Universal Draft Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights.  Medical ethicist Richard Ashcroft, in an op-ed in a Sept. 9 essay in SciDev.net adds his voice to the chorus of criticisms of the document.  Ashcroft argues that the long, multinational, political process of developing the draft resulted in a watered-down document with less bite and less useful guidance than existing statements such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Declaration of Helsinki. [tm]