Axis director: Vincent Couture and Jean-Frédéric Ménard

There is an ongoing need to examine regulatory models that can meet the socio-ethical and legal challenges that this poses for child health and reproductive medicine. To this end, we will examine emerging technologies and medical and scientific advances (e.g. artificial intelligence, gene editing, non-invasive prenatal genomic testing) within the framework of what are known as normative dimensions (ethical, legal, regulatory).

Objectives :
1. To bring together Quebec research expertise in ethics and law as applied to assisted reproduction, the use of reproductive cells for research purposes (embryos, sperm and oocytes) and the perinatal period and child development.
2. Bringing together Quebec expertise in ethics and legal research applied to privacy protection, open science and the use of genomic and epigenomic data.
3. Train the next generation in ethics and law with regard to the issues encountered during this period.
4. Provide a platform for discussion of normative issues affecting network members.
5. Inform members and the general public about relevant developments in the law and ethics of perinatal care and child development.
6. Support the network’s ethics and legal initiatives.
7. Support network members in dealing with specific normative situations.
8. Develop standard-setting tools to enable the network to fulfill its mandate.