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| March 2009 |
Insight/Opinion |
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Science is a human rightChristina Scott and David Dickson1976 is perhaps better known as the year when Soweto high school students began rioting against an education policy that quite deliberately deprived them of physics teachers, biology experiments and laboratories, to handicap African teenagers' ability to take control of their own destinies in the modern world. Less well known is the fact that half a year earlier, in January 1976, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights came into force. Your right "to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications" is spelt out in this covenant, recognised by the United Nations (UN) as one of its principal human rights treaties. This agreement - part of the International Bill of Human Rights - is a valuable way of reminding ourselves and our governments that we have already agreed to the principle of making science available to the poor as well as the rich. 159 countries have signed this human rights covenant. Another seven - including both the USA and South Africa - have signed but not yet ratified the treaty, so it is not binding on citizens and governments. This deserves to be better known. South Africans had to wait until October 1994, when our first democratic president, Nelson Mandela, made his first visit to the USA as a head of state and visited the UN headquarters in New York, before we signed the treaty. We still haven't ratified it. In the US, a series of governments, both Democratic and Republican, have balked at ratifying the treaty in part because of fears that they might then have to provide public health care as a fundamental human right for Americans who currently pay exorbitant amounts to doctor-and-nurse megabusinesses, rely on charities, or go without. What is our excuse here in South Africa for not ratifying this treaty? Mosibudi Mangena, South Africa's minister of science and technology, has no objection to ratifying the covenant, but he cannot act in isolation. He has to rely on the good wishes of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Perhaps ratifying the covenant could become a New Year's Resolution for Fatima Hajaig, who chaired parliament's subcommittee on international affairs before being appointed a deputy foreign minister in November? The covenant is important because it was meant to provide some muscle to implement the hopes and dreams of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Tucked away near the bottom of the Declaration, signed in December some 60 years ago, is a little-known clause stating that "everyone has the right freely … to share in scientific advancement and its benefits". But obstacles complicate efforts to implement this commitment. Both the declaration and the covenant include a separate clause giving individuals the right to protect the "moral and material interests" their science offers. This endorsement of intellectual property restricts many efforts to ensure that anyone can enjoy the fruits of science. It gives people - ranging from inventors to izinyanga or traditional herbalists - the right to control access to their results, immediately excluding those who cannot afford to pay their charges. This issue is at the heart of campaigns by networks such as the Kenya-based wing of Health Action International, which works in 20 African countries to reduce the costs of essential medicines ranging from toothpaste to asthma inhalers to antibiotics against pneumonia. Campaigners such as former Ugandan pharmacist Patrick Mubangizi, who coordinates the Africa section of the non-profit Health Action International, assert that the right to enjoy the results of biomedical science should come before pharmaceutical companies' rights to charge for their discoveries. This issue is also behind efforts to test traditional herbal medications for
safety, effectiveness, dosages and side effects at places such as the South
African Herbal Science and Medicine Institute at the University of the Western
Cape, led by former Mitchell's Plain resident Quinton Johnson, or Nceba Gqaleni
at the University of Kwazulu-Natal medical school in Durban. We also need to clarify people's right to science when that science may conflict with either religious beliefs or moral values — whether they be over developing nuclear weapons or researching the potential medical use of embryonic stem cells. Proponents of stem cell research point to the declaration and covenant to support their cause. They argue that if the science to treat life-threatening diseases exists, sufferers have a human right to access it. But there is a powerful argument that science can only be beneficial if it is developed within a moral framework. A complex set of international ethical regulations governing clinical trials in biomedical research - currently used to protect South Africans ranging from babies of HIV-positive mothers on antiretroviral drugs to sexually-active 16-year-old girls in microbicide research to adult blood donors - have their origins in horrific experiments by German doctors in Nazi concentration camps in Europe during World War Two, nearly halfway through the last century. Still, our human right to science cannot be pursued (or protected) single-mindedly. This right must be balanced with other equally important considerations, whether they be protecting intellectual property, human morality or environmental sustainability. Stephen Humphreys saw firsthand the links between climate change and development when he worked in Dakar, Senegal in the 1990s. Now he is research director at the International Council on Human Rights Policy, created in the same year that South Africa held its first democratic elections, based in Geneva, Switzerland. Humphreys was the main author of the council's ''rough guide'' linking human
rights and climate change. Humphreys has used the concept of fundamental human
rights to argue the case for action against human-induced climate change,
induced by our insatiable appetite for oil and petrol (and their byproducts,
ranging from Vaseline to plastic bags to higher living standards). Fortunately, many South African scientists have volunteered for unpaid duty on the many working groups of another organisation based in Geneva, the the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). On one level, the IPCC was started in 1988 by the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation to sift through brain-numbing numbers and mountains of evidence in order to tell elected politicians and the voters what is truth and what is dodgy or out-of-date - and what should be done about both when it comes to global warming. On another level, the IPCC is humanity's single biggest scientific undertaking. Now that it has been going on for more than two decades, the IPCC is certainly the most authoritative source of worldwide information on how we are heating up our world to intolerable, life-altering levels. So perhaps we should consider IPCC authors such as Bruce Hewitson from the University of Cape Town, Guy Midgley from the South African National Biodiversity Institute at Kirstenbosch gardens, Coleen Vogel from Wits University and Bob Scholes from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) as human rights activists as well as superb researchers. When and where human rights have been invoked about science over the past several decades, the issues have primarily been seen as the need to protect individuals from potentially unethical applications of science - and not individuals' right to enjoy the benefits of science. Perhaps that is why South African contributors such as Vogel and Scholes (who
both spoke at the Reporting Science conference in Johannesburg late last year)
received so little recognition when the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was shared
between the IPCC and the man who might have been president of America, Al Gore,
star of the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth. Upholding people's right to the benefits of modern science can reinforce demands for elected governments to create an enabling environment for scientific development. The needs range from improving nations' basic classroom capacity to produce and deliver science to getting its potential benefits explained and communicated in an accessible way, as is done nationally every March at the SciFest in Grahamstown, run by Vera Adams, and is done across the country - at the MTN Sciencentre in Cape Town with Julie Cleverdon and the SALT telescope in the Northern Cape with Kevindran Govender. Requiring governments to live up to their contractual obligations will not automatically guarantee our 'right to science.' International condemnation of torture has not made that disappear - but it has helped ordinary people gain protection - and sometimes redress - against some very powerful figures. Meanwhile, giving more 'power to the elbows' of those calling on governments to meet their obligations would certainly help. Perhaps, in an election year, it might be worthwhile for bodies such as the Academy of Science of South Africa to lobby for the ratification of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Right. More information:
World Conference of Science Journalists http://www.wcsj2009.org
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* David Dickson is director and founder of the open-source Science and
Development Network website. Christina Scott, based in Cape Town, is
SciDev.Net's Africa news editor, online at