World Congress of Bioethics in Qatar raises ethical questions

We publish in this issue of the journal a set of short commentary-style contributions by critics of the International Association of Bioethics decision to hold the next World Congress of Bioethics in Qatar,1 as well as a joint response by the immediate past President and the current President of the International Association of Bioethics defending that choice of Congress host country,2 and also a viewpoint by the local academic host of the Congress.3 There are very few events on the bioethics conference calendar that are as truly international as the World Congress of Bioethics. Since the inception of the International Association of Bioethics, one of the main functions of the association has been to organise the Congress. The Association does not have the means to organise such a large-scale event; it depends on an academic host willing to shoulder the financial risk as well as much of the logistics work required to pull the Congress off. One of the selection criteria has always been how many scholarships a host is able to provide to scholars who otherwise could not afford participation. Beneficiaries of this are typically colleagues travelling from the global south to attend the Congress. Unsurprisingly, colleagues working in well-heeled authoritarian countries, which have a geopolitical reason for being in the international limelight, had it always a bit easier than cash-strapped humanities institutes in liberal democracies. Quelle surprise, more than 20 years ago, Abu Dhabi generously sponsored a bioethics meeting with active support of the IAB Board, and many of its members in attendance (business class airline tickets, luxury hotel accommodation, and a briefcase for every board member thrown in for good measure). I mention the Abu Dhabi event because while no World Congress has ever been held in a majority Muslim country, this high-profile global bioethics event involving the International Association of Bioethics was held in a Muslim society. I recall vividly Solomon Benatar, who was President of the Association at the time, giving the keynote speech. He stressed the value of collaboration across cultural and religious differences. Muslim audience members applauded this Jewish speaker. Another authoritarian, well-heeled country, China, hosted the World Congress, too. Recently, Indian colleagues hosted the Congress, in a Christian medical college, no less. Human rights violations the that time Indian government was involved in, that badly affected Muslims in that country, didn't feature in conversations about the Congress venue, neither did the fact that it was held in a sectarian institution. What matters is this: Academic core principles were guaranteed during each of these events: open debate, no restrictions on topics or points of view. The Congress in Qatar will be measured against this firmly established academic standard. In fact, in Abu Dhabi, women audience members protesting the discrimination that they experienced in the country's hospitals led to a frank discussion on an impromptu panel attended by senior government figures as well as a few select other international attendees. Much has been made by critics of the fact that some potential Congress attendees would have reason to reconsider attending a meeting held in a country where they are illegal in some sense. Homosexuality is illegal in Qatar, as in much of the Middle East. All of that is true, but it is nonetheless surprising that similar concerns were not raised when Singapore hosted the Congress. At the time homosexuality was illegal in that country too. Progress has since been made. It is well known that Qatari government figures seem to enjoy embarrassing themselves globally with fairly archaic views on the subject matter. Their gesturing at respect for cultural diversity is only mildly amusing; it reminds me of Lee Kuan Yew's, Mohamad Mahathir's and other Asian strongmen's ‘Asian human rights’ a few decades ago, which was code for trampling on the civil rights of all sorts of people. The reader won't be surprised to learn that respect for cultural diversity wasn't something they would countenance in their own countries. I do recall being shouted at when I stressed the professional obligations of doctors vis a vis their queer patients during a bioethics conference held by bioethicists of the English-speaking Caribbean. The same happened during a UNESCO bioethics event that I attended in India decades ago. The lone openly gay attendee of the Caribbean event was probably happy to be not entirely alone after all, and during the event in India, a young Indian psychiatrist apologised for his colleagues’ outbursts, quite confident that inevitably things would change for the better in India too. As a gay man, should I have declined those invitations? Quite to the contrary, I was delighted to be there, have a say, take a stance. How else is a global exchange of views supposed to work? Was it comfortable? I can't say that it was. Let me return briefly to the example of Singapore: Its National University of Singapore is home to a wealthy, prominent bioethics centre, staffed by a fairly significant number of senior Western academics with a high profile in our field. I do wonder whether the Congress critics also think that our colleagues should have never accepted the Singaporean money, given ongoing discrimination against international colleagues who are HIV positive. They are not permitted to work in that country. If human rights issues alone should determine where one can legitimately go (as an international conference goer or worker), liberal secularist Westerners better stay where they are, because things aren't great in many parts of the world. And how, in their considered view, should the International Association of Bioethics weigh the systemic racism that permeates the US justice system the next time that country is considered as host for a World Congress? It is true that Qatari largesse when it comes to sponsoring sporting events, academic meetings and Internet influencers has a geopolitical function, but so has Singapore's decision to resource its flagship university exceedingly well. I do think one should not be blind to these issues, and I thank our Dutch colleagues for raising them. Islamic Bioethics, or what goes under this label, is currently going its own intellectually insular way. This might work within an Islamic context, and possibly for policy development in Muslim societies, but intellectually the enterprise remains quite problematic, for the following reasons: There is no acceptance of the need to engage in debate on the basis of public reason-based analysis. The latter has long been accepted and understood by Christian bioethicists, for instance.4 As a result of this, Islamic bioethics content is remarkably lost in the global bioethics space. At best, Western bioethicists reference those works to flag what ‘the position’ of Islamic bioethics would be on a particular issue. Even that is quite questionable. There can't be any serious substantive engagement, because Islamic bioethics contributions are not participating in the global bioethics discourse. Thus far, Islamic bioethics content rejects the lingua franca of global bioethics. I see the Congress as a great opportunity to reflect on this. Is it a deliberate strategy by Islamic bioethicists to avoid seeing their analysis being challenged by others? Is what they engage in ‘bioethics’, methodologically, or is it merely religious discourse vaguely attached to bioethics issues? I can't think of a better place to discuss this than the World Congress of Bioethics in Qatar. Let me end by reflecting on another issue brought up, quite rightly, by the critics: the environmental footprint of global congresses. It would be hypocritical of me to deny how damaging the global conference circuit is to the environment, and so, to current and future generations of people. As anyone knows who has attended the Congress, the presentations are only a part of what makes in-person participation so valuable. The icing on the Congress cake are truly endless personal conversations during lunchbreaks and dinners, that's where new collaborations are forged, papers conceptualised, and so on and so forth. We had, during COVID, an online-only World Congress, hosted against the odds, and to the best of their ability, by our colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania. It was the best that could be done under the circumstances, but by all accounts, the Congress was an impoverished version of in-person events, because those personal interactions were impossible. One could say that the climate crisis is a sufficient reason to end in-person Congresses, but then that has nothing to do with Qatar hosting the event. It should be a principled decision made by the Board of the International Association of Bioethics, after consultation with the members of the organisation. Perhaps the environmental harms are not outweighed by the professional benefits.

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