Article 5 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

Article 17 of the Geneva Conventions Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War requires that "No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind."

In 1987 the U.N. Assembly adopted the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, article 2 of which stipulates:

1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.
2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political in stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

These international human rights documents make it clear that torture is never to be permitted for any reason. Nevertheless, it is evident in the reports of the U.N. High Commission for Human Rights, Amnesty International and other governmental and non-governmental organizations that the use of torture is widespread and is tolerated or encouraged by some governments. The eradication of torture will require greatly increased pressure on these governments to honour their legal and/or moral obligations to implement these internationally agreed standards.

Physician participation in torture has long been regarded as a serious violation of medical ethics. The 1975 WMA Declaration of Tokyo: Guidelines for Medical Doctors Concerning Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in Relation to Detention and Imprisonment, forbids any such participation on the grounds that there must be "no use made of any medical knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity."

In 1997 the WMA Assembly adopted the Declaration of Hamburg Concerning Support for Medical Doctors Refusing to Participate in, or to Condone, the Use of Torture or Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, which called on the medical profession to actively oppose torture and to support physicians who speak out against such violations of human rights.

The 2003 Assembly in Helsinki adopted a Resolution on the Responsibility of Physicians in the Denunciation of Acts of Torture or Cruel or Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of which they are Aware that encourages National Medical Associations to promote laws and programs for the abolition of torture.

The WMA is also a strong supporter of the Istanbul Protocol (International Guidelines for the Investigation and Documentation of Torture) and is an active participant in a project to develop a Manual on the Effective Investigation and Documentation of Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

Many National Medical Associations have incorporated prohibitions against participation in torture in their codes of ethics and other policies and some have inaugurated and/or supported activities opposing torture. Much more needs to be done, however, if the medical profession is to fulfil its role as the advocate for the rights of all patients.

May 2004 - The Commercialization of Human Reproductive and Genetic Material

Recent scientific developments in biotechnology, particularly in the field of genetics, have sparked considerable controversy over the increasing commercialisation of scientific and medical research and practice in this field. The Human Genome Project identified all the approximately 30,000 genes in human DNA and determined the sequences of the 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA. Although much of the project was publicly funded and the results put into the public domain, there was simultaneously a rush to patent the gene sequences for potential commercial uses. This posed a great challenge to patent offices, courts and legislators to determine whether human genetic material is or should be patentable and therefore commercializable. More recent developments in reproductive technologies have extended this debate to human reproductive materials, ova, sperm and embryos.

It was recognized early on that this issue is as much ethical as economic. It involves questions about human nature and the status of the human body, human genes and human reproductive materials at different stages of development. Numerous studies on these issues were commissioned and some eventually resulted in international agreements such as the following which, as is evident from the excerpts quoted, are not entirely compatible:

• UNESCO Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (1997): "The human genome in its natural state shall not give rise to financial gains."
  
  
• Council of Europe Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine (1997): "The human body and its parts shall not, as such, give rise to financial gain.
  
  
• European Parliament Directive on the Legal Protection of Biotechnological Inventions (1998): "The human body, at the various stages of its formation and development, and the simple discovery of one of its elements, including the sequence or partial sequence of a gene, cannot constitute patentable interventions. An element isolated from the human body or otherwise produced by means of a technical process, including the sequence or partial sequence of a gene, may constitute a patentable invention, even if the structure of that element is identical to that of a natural element." Inventions considered contrary to ordre public or morality, such as processes for cloning human beings and uses of human embryos for industrial or commercial purposes, are not patentable. The 2002 decision of European Patent Office that embryonic stem cells are not patentable is under appeal.
  
  
• UNESCO International Bioethics Committee Advice of the IBC on the Patentability of the Human Genome (2001): "…there are strong ethical grounds for excluding the human genome from patentability".

Considerable attention has been devoted to the adverse effects of the commercialization of human reproductive and genetic material on people in developing countries. The Centre for the Management of Intellectual Property in Health R&D is a resource for the promotion of access by poor people to health technologies through improved management of intellectual property in research and development.

In October 2003 the WMA General Assembly adopted a Resolution on the Non- Commercialization of Human Reproductive Material that calls on National Medical Associations to urge their governments to enact legislation prohibiting commercial transactions in human ova, sperm and embryos and calls on physicians involved in the procurement and use of human ova, sperm, and embryos to ascertain that these materials have not been purchased from the source individuals.