General Koïchiro Matsuura will present the Avicenna Prize for Ethics in Science on April 26 (Room II, 6.30 pm) to its first laureate, Margaret A. Somerville, in the presence of Jafar Towfighi, the Iranian Minister of Science, Research and Technology.
Selected
by an international jury, Margaret Somerville, holds dual Australian and
Canadian nationality. She is both Samuel Gale Professor of Law and a professor
of medicine at McGill University in Montreal (Canada). Founder and Director of
the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law, she was also founding
Chairperson of the Ethics Committee of the National Research Council of Canada.
Through
her books, conferences and other work, Professor Somerville has made an
important contribution to the global development of bioethics, and to the
ethical and legal aspects of medicine and science. She has worked with a range
of international organizations, such as UNESCO, the World Health Organization
and the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights. Among her many
publications are "The Ethical Canary: Science, Society and the Human
Spirit" and "Death Talk: The Case Against Euthanasia and
Physician-Assisted Suicide".
Mr Towfighi opened the April 26 ceremony.
After a speech by Jens Erik Fenstad (Norway), Chairman of UNESCO’s World
Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST), the
Director-General awarded the prize to Margaret Somerville. The laureate
presented her work and a video about the life of Avicenna, taken from an
Iranian television documentary, followed.
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Selected
by an international jury, Margaret Somerville, holds dual Australian and
Canadian nationality. She is both Samuel Gale Professor of Law and a professor
of medicine at McGill University in Montreal (Canada). Founder and Director of
the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law, she was also founding
Chairperson of the Ethics Committee of the National Research Council of Canada.
Through
her books, conferences and other work, Professor Somerville has made an
important contribution to the global development of bioethics, and to the
ethical and legal aspects of medicine and science. She has worked with a range
of international organizations, such as UNESCO, the World Health Organization
and the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights. Among her many publications
are The Ethical Canary: Science, Society and the Human Spirit and Death Talk:
The Case Against Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide.
The
Prize owes its name to 11th century doctor, philosopher and alchemist Abu Ali
al-Hosein Ibn Abdallah Ibn Sina (980-1038), who was known in Europe as
Avicenna. As a humanist and physician, he developed an approach that prefigured
ethics in science.
The
new prize encourages ethical reflection on questions raised by scientific and
technological advances, a goal that coincides with UNESCO’s priorities. The
Organization’s Executive Board approved the statutes of the prize at its 166th
session. Sponsored by the Islamic Republic of Iran, the prize consists of a
gold medal portraying Avicenna, a certificate, the sum of US $10,000, and a
weeklong trip to Iran during which the laureate will participate in scientific
conferences
source: UNESCO