Michael Fuchs National ethics councils - Deutscher Ethikrat

Michael Fuchs National ethics councils. Their backgrounds, functions and modes of operation compared
5. Central and eastern Europe
Slovenia
Slovenia is occasionally said by representatives of central and eastern European
bioethics to be the state with the oldest national ethics body. The National Medical
Ethics Committee was established as long ago as in 1977. Unlike the decision of the
French President in 1983 to create a bioethics forum and a legislative advisory body
for ethical issues in the life sciences and healthcare, the Slovenian decision of 1977 was
the state’s response to developments in research involving human subjects and in
pharmaceutical research, and was intended to confer state authority on the ethical examination
of the relevant projects. The Committee was able to follow in the footsteps
of a predecessor in the medical faculty of the University of Ljubljana that had existed
since the mid-1960s. In addition to examining research projects, the Committee began
early on to concern itself with medical ethics education for medical students.
The Committee’s tasks and the basis of appointment of its members were redefined
in 1995. It is therefore only in that year that Slovenia’s National Medical Ethics
Committee can be said to have become an ethics council comparable in its functions
and mode of operation with the French or Danish model. It is an advisory body established
to examine ethical problems in medicine, which can issue Opinions at the
request of Parliament, the Minister of Health, the National Health Council and the
Medical Association, various healthcare institutions, and citizens. In addition, the
Committee can draw up Opinions on its own initiative.
The Committee has 13 members. Candidates are proposed by the University, the
National Health Council and the Slovenian Medical Association from the spheres of
medicine, psychology, law and social sciences, the humanities and ethics, and appointed
by the Minister of Health. At present, the majority of the members are doctors,
the others being a clinical psychologist, a legal expert, an ethicist, a Roman
Catholic priest, a sociologist and a lay person. In addition to their activity as university
professors, three of the members also belong to the Academy of Sciences and
Arts. In the view of the prominent Committee member Jozˇe Trontelj, the composition
is balanced, in terms of disciplines and professional backgrounds as well as of
philosophies of life.
Since the redefinition of its role, the Committee has intervened decisively in the
legislative process, both by drawing up draft laws (on organ transplants, medically assisted
reproduction and gene technology) and by commenting on proposed legislation
drafted by Parliament. The Committee’s chair was for many years also a member of
the Council of Europe’s Steering Committee on Bioethics (CDBI). As a result, the international-law
deliberations of the CDBI have strongly influenced the parliamentary
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debate and opinion formation in Slovenia. To date, the Committee has prepared
Opinions and reports on the following subjects: euthanasia, medically assisted suicide,
the status of non-medical therapies, the refusal of blood transfusions for children
of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and
Dignity of the Human Being with Regard to the Application of Biology and Medicine,
therapeutic cloning, patients’ rights in terminal illness and palliative care, the
use of placebos in studies of psychiatric drugs, and limitation of the treatment of patients
in a permanent vegetative state.
In addition, the Committee remains the central body responsible for the examination
of research projects involving human subjects. In this field, the National Committee’s
consent is required for all state-funded research projects for doctoral theses
and also for clinical studies. The consent of a local ethics committee suffices only for
Phase 4 clinical studies.
Address
National Medical Ethics Committee
Institute of Clinical Neurophysiology, University Medical Center
Zaloska 7, 1525 Ljubljana, Slovenia
Bibliography
CDBI (2001). Addendum to Developments in the Field of Bioethics in Member States, other States and
International Organisations: Slovenia. Recent Developments in the Field of Bioethics in Slovenia
(CDBI/INF 2001/4). Strasbourg, June 2001: 4.
Trontelj, J. (1996). Statement of Jo_e V. Trontelj. In: National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC); National
Institutes of Health (NIH) (ed.). The International Summit of National Bioethics Advisory Bodies […]
San Francisco, California […] Thursday, November 21, 1996 […]: 68 – 72. Available online at:
http://www.georgetown.edu/research/nrcbl/nbac/transcripts/1996/11-21-96.pdf
Trontelj, J. (2000). Ethics Committees in Slovenia. In: Glasa, J.; Council of Europe (ed.). Ethics Committees in
Central & Eastern Europe. Bratislava: 239 – 249.
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