Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty
On July 22, 2022 the International Association of Bioethics tweeted out some big news: the next World Congress of Bioethics would be hosted by the Qatari city of Doha, in July 2024. Since 1992, the bi-annual conference has been the preeminent event for researchers, professors, members of the private health and pharmaceutical industry, and others to gather around to discuss big questions about the rights and wrongs of medicine and research. Rapid advancements around the role of public health initiatives in the wake of the COVID pandemic have put an especially bright spotlight on bioethical questions these days.
In past years, the congress has been held in Amsterdam, San Francisco, Sydney, Edinburg and Mexico City. At each convention, hundreds of attendees gathered to take in lectures from preeminent thinkers in the field. Panels discussions weighed in on topics like the best treatment doctors should provide to trans teens, how aggressively the medical community should treat patients with devastating brain injuries, and the ethics of regulating optional plastic surgery.
Never before had the IAB held the event in any country in the Middle East.