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07.01.2013
Mot du Président et Programme 2013

https://www.brocher.ch/content/files/Program 2013.pdf

Dear Madam, Dear Sir,
The Brocher Foundation is a European Academic Platform dedicated to the study and discussion of critical choices surrounding new medical technologies and their ethical, economic, legal and social impact. The Foundation hosts visiting researchers from around the world and organizes scientific events that take place throughout the year.


In 2013, the Foundation will host 49 visiting researchers over a period of 8 months. Their stays will last from one to four months, depending of their scientific project. Some 200 publications have already resulted from researchers’ residencies, and many more are on the way. The connections established between senior and younger visiting researchers have given rise to many fruitful collaborations. The Brocher Foundation is now recognized as a significant
academic contributor in the ELSI field (Ethical, Legal and Social Issues surrounding new medical development), and the demand for visiting researchers’ residencies has risen sharply.


In view of its growing success, the Foundation has decided to enlarge its Scientific Committee.
Professor Nikolas Rose, head of the newly launched Department of Social Science, Health & Medicine at King’s College London, Professor Nouzha Guessous, former president of the International Bioethics Committee (UNESCO) and member of the Comité d’éthique de la recherche biomédicale of Casablanca and of the Moroccan Association of Bioethics, and Professor Marcel Tanner, director of the Swiss Tropical & Public Health Institute, have accepted to join the Scientific Committee. Furthermore, Professor Bartha Maria Knoppers, director of
the Centre of Genomics and Policy, Faculty of Medicine, McGill University, has been nominated Special Jury for the selection of visiting researchers. We are happy and proud to welcome these new colleagues to our scientific body.

I take this opportunity to thank very warmly, on behalf of the Brocher Foundation Board, Mrs Marie-José Simoen, Administrator of the Collège de Belgique and former General Secretary of the Belgium National Fund for scientific research, who has chaired our Scientific Committee for twelve years. Through her leadership and dedication, she has played a crucial role in the development of the Foundation. At the end of June 2013, while remaining on the Scientific Committee, she will hand over the chair to Professor Yvon Englert, a member of this Committee from the very beginning. Head of department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of the Hopital Erasme and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Yvon Englert is a former member of the Belgium Committee of bioethics and of the European Committee of bioethics.

We also welcome a new member on the Foundation Board: Professor Doris Schopper, from the University of Geneva’s Faculty of medicine, director of the Center for Education and Research in Humanitarian Action (CERAH). From 1991 to 1998, Doris Schopper was president of the Swiss branch of MSF, and she was twice president of the MSF International Council. In 2001, she was asked to set up an Ethics Review Board for MSF International, and since then has chaired this Board, coordinating the ethical review of MSF research proposals and providing advice on ethical matters. Doris Schopper has also worked as health policy adviser in the Global Program on AIDS at WHO headquarters in Geneva (1992-95) as well as for the Swiss Tropical Institute.
In December 2012, she has been appointed as a member of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).


The scientific achievements of the Foundation and its growing influence worldwide owe much to the joint efforts of the Board, the Scientific Committee and the highly motivated staff. But they are primarily the result of the hard work and open-mindedness of all the researchers who have stayed at the Foundation or who have organized seminars on its site. On behalf of the Brocher Foundation, I wish to express my gratitude to all.


Yours faithfully,


Jean-Dominique Vassalli
President of the Board
Rector of the University of Geneva