Normal vs Pathological at the European Bioethics Forum

The sixth edition of the European Bioethics Forum, whose program was presented here to the press on Tuesday, will examine the question of "the normal and the pathological" this year.

"How should we think of Alzheimer's dementia? How does society treat the mentally ill? What is there to do when confronted with psychopaths? Bear the child of another: is it slavery or solidarity?" Questions such as these and more will animate the free debates between scientists of renown and the public, while touching on ever pressing concerns in a European society confronted with an aging population, growing psychological sicknesses and strong shifts in perspective provoked by research.

"The European Bioethics Forum has for its mission to render all manner of bioethics questions accessible. It is a week of exchange between experts and the public at large in order to consider how humans are confronted by scientific progress which touches the body," summarized Nadia Aubain, co-founder and director of the event alongside French doctor and geneticist Jean-Louis Mandel, director of the biomedical research center of the University Hospitals of Strasbourg.

"Humans and society change faster and faster, at a vertiginous speed for those who look out the window. In past centuries, one barely saw or didn't see the transformations on the generational scale. Today, the means to reproduce oneself is put into question, the means to think and to document oneself is modified and it is becoming difficult to sift the true from the false in the constant flux of information which flows past all of us," explained Nadia Aubain.

Organized every year in Strasbourg, the European Bioethics Forum has been as well received by the public as by the scientific community. Its success resides not only in its openness to the general public, but also in its interdisciplinary approach which allows physicians, researchers and neurobiologists to rub shoulders equally with philosophers, sociologists and writers.

The 2016 edition will be especially notable for the presence of French philosopher Roger Pol-Droit, who will launch the inaugural debate on the question of pathological norms. "Where to place the threshold between the normal and the pathological? Who decides this threshold? Is it the same for everyone? Can it change according to location and era?"

Other well-known guests will include Andre Compte-Sponville, member of the French Consulting Committee on Ethics, author of 20 books translated into 24 languages, and former French health minister, pediatrician Jean-Francois Mattei, who will give a conference titled, "Does medicine lead to transhumanism?"

This year, organizers of the European Bioethics Forum made the choice to extend the program in order to give deeper considerations into themes pursued since the inaugural 2011 edition: aging and end of life issues, procreation and the family, the human body in separate pieces, the brain and its behaviors, as well as money and health.

According to the organizers, the event has brought together nearly 67,500 participants and 900 experts over the course of five years, and benefits from a large international audience thanks to social networks and internet streaming. Endit