IFMBE News: The Road to ICSU Membership

The Road to ICSU Membership

The 280 emails received in my IUPESM box since 1 January 1999 justify this chronological summary of our attempts to obtain full membership of ICSU. Part of this ICSU story is copied from the emails I have received, mainly from Keith Boddy (IUPESM President) and Gary Fullerton (IUPESM Secretary General), who have played a fantastic and decisive role along the way.

You may think such a presentation superfluous following the two very informative papers from Niilo (Saranummi) and Keith (Boddy) in the July 1999 issue of IFMBE NEWS (Volume 37), but if you remember my message when I started as IFMBE president I feel full affiliation to be an immensely important issue, considering that the international recognition of our disciplines by all the scientific unions is vital for our future.

Full membership within ICSU is viewed as crucial to achieving several long-term IFMBE+IOMP goals. These goals involve accelerated development and application of physical and engineering sciences in medicine. The IUPESM plans to hold consensus-building workshops on the key issues in physical and engineering sciences in medicine at the Chicago 2000 World Congress. Consensus documents will be used to seek the assistance of ICSU with

improved international scientist access to major research facilities,
improved Internet access to bioengineering and medical physics libraries and databases,
improved international student access to unique graduate education facilities, and
improved methods to assure science input on international policy concerning health care systems.

This is my personal account of the events and activities we have encountered on our way to full ICSU membership:

It’s a long way to ICSU

15/10/97. Niilo, as President of IUPESM, having sent a document applying for full member of ICSU on 30 April 1997, meets with Juri Engelbrecht, President of the Academy of Sciences of Estonia, who has been designated by ICSU to report on our full membership.

22/10/97. Keith and I meet Dr Stuyck-Taillandier, Executive Director of ICSU, in London. The meeting is very cordial and constructive. Our understanding is that ICSU is trying to reorganize its membership by fusing some existing unions so that fewer unions will be full members. Nevertheless, the Executive Director encourages us to seek full membership and will advise us on producing a full dossier for formal submission. He recognizes that IUPESM is unique in the application of science and technology to health care with direct patient involvement. This is seen as an excellent basis for improving public and political awareness of the direct usefulness of science to mankind.

Dr Stuyck-Taillandier sends both of us documentation and Keith prepares a set of documents outlining Medical Physics and Bioengine-ering, elaborating substantially on our previous document, including the outline programs we agreed on, and suggesting actions to be implemented. This draft dossier entitled ‘Report on the current and future relationship of IUPESM with the International Council of Scientific Unions’ is circulated through IUPESM and sent without major changes to ICSU.

March 98. The report (11 months later) by W.Schiehlen and J.Engelbrecht on Niilo’s document proposes to maintain for the moment the present ICSU-IUPESM relationship (as an affiliate member). ICSU asks for comments for consideration by the General Committee at its meeting on 23-24 April in Vienna.

April 98. A supplementary report, prepared by Keith and approved by the Administrative Council, is submitted.

May-June 98. Numerous telephone conversations take place between Keith and the ICSU Executive Director (who gives an enthusiastic response to Keith's proposal for collaboration in relation to the World Conference on Science (WCS) and encourages us to persist).

15/6/98. A letter from ICSU records formally that the General Council, at its meeting at the end of April, has agreed with the recommendation that ‘associate relationship was the most appropriate method of collaboration for the moment’.

10/9/98. A letter is sent to ICSU by Keith, following helpful catalytic telephone conversations, seeking reconsideration of our application for full membership.

19/10/98. The Assistant Executive Director at ICSU tells Keith that the Executive Committee has agreed to reconsider our application for full membership by the General Committee. There seems to have been some debate between the diehard traditionalists wanting nothing to change and the more progressive members who are convinced that modernization is essential.

22/10/98. "Since our status and that of Medical Physics and Bioengineering would be enhanced if we collaborated with ICSU and also if we were to be invited to participate in the World Science Conference," IUPESM is invited by the ICSU Executive Director, Jean-Francois Stuyck-Taillandier, to participate in a round-table discussion on new technologies in medical science at the Budapest meeting with a 15-minute presentation on medical imaging. Keith submits a potential abstract to ICSU for joint presentation at this conference.

October 98. Gary surfs the Internet: "I have visited the ICSU website and have found a great deal of information that helps to understand some of the communication problems we are having. The most important piece of data is the fact that ICSU was completely reorganized at the Extraordinary Meeting of the General Assembly in Vienna, Austria, in April 1998. ICSU has a completely new structure and apparently a whole flock of new staff. The new ICSU structure approved in April is not yet reflected in the regular material on the homepage. I assume this will be corrected this year. According to the new statutes and rules, the method for applying for membership has been changed. The Committee which rejected our application in April has been replaced. I believe we are operating with a largely new and clean slate."

23/11/98. A letter from ICSU records that, at its meeting on 5-6 October, the Executive Committee has agreed to a resubmission of a revised application from IUPESM to ICSU’s Scientific Committee on Membership, Structure and Statutes. A revised and extended version of the dossier, prepared by Keith and approved by the Council, is submitted shortly afterwards.

10/01/99. The IUPESM application will be considered in Paris in April by the Scientific Committee on Membership, Structure and Statutes (SCMSS) rather than at the World Conference on Science in Budapest.The final approval of the IUPESM application will be by the ICSU General Assembly in Cairo in September

21/01/99. Keith sends a newly proposed submission to ICSU. A very well-structured and argumentative text of 30 pages entitled "Proposal that the International Union for Physical and Engineering Sciences in Medicine becomes a full member of the International Council for Science" is submitted.

5/02/99. Email from Gary:"Dear Drs Keith Boddy and Jean-Pierre Morucci, The Administrative Council of IUPESM has committed funds to send two "official IUPESM representatives" to the ICSU SCMSS meeting in Paris, France, in early April 1999 to present the application of IUPESM to ICSU for elevation from associate to full membership. I have the honour to inform you that you were selected by the Council as best able to represent IUPESM in this important meeting with ICSU."

12/02/99. Letter from ICSU:

"Dear Colleague, In the near future your organization will be receiving an official letter of invitation from UNESCO and ICSU to take part in an International NGO Consultation associated with the forthcoming World Conference on Science to be held in Budapest. The aim of the Consultation is to provide an opportunity for the NGOs to discuss issues of common interest to them and to formulate NGO Collective Recommendations to be submitted to the Conference for consideration. We were recently approached by the organizers of the Conference to prepare the Consultation and we accepted the challenge.

We would appreciate receiving your comments on the draft documents of the Conference and your suggestions for recommendations which will be debated at the Consultation and, if adopted, included in the draft NGO Collective Recommendations. You will find the necessary background information on the Conference, including the main documents on the UNESCO WORLD CONFERENCE ON SCIENCE 26 June – 1 July 1999, Budapest, Hungary."

Nandor Richter and Oskar Chomicki kindly accept to attend the meeting and to introduce IUPESM by presenting our structures, activities and goals. (Their full report of the meeting can be found on the IUPESM homepage. At the end of this text I have extracted the key points of the report.)

02/03/99. Exchange of emails between Gary and ICSU:

"Dear Ms Bahaman Fard, Thank you for your prompt reply to my request for additional information concerning the IUPESM application for full membership in the ICSU. I will seek the assistance of the IUPESM Administrative Council in formulating considered answers to the questions that you pose. The questions are legitimate concerns and will help us prepare support materials for final presentation in April. I will send the replies to you in writing prior to that date to make it easier for the committee to consider."

"Dear Dr Fullerton, It is never very easy to anticipate the primary concerns of the individual members of the Committee but I believe that one of these will probably be the uncertainty expressed in the review of IUPESM carried out for the (ex) General Committee concerning the future and funding of IUPESM. Other questions commonly raised are:

Can the organization demonstrate that it advances scientific knowledge as opposed to simply using it?
Does the organization sponsor or conduct scientific research?
Does the organization have working groups, commissions, etc.?
Does the organization have a demonstrated record of achievement in the promotion of international scientific activity and cooperation?
What is the organization's record of publication and research dissemination?
Can the organization demonstrate that the major international meetings it has held have been successful?
What activities are conducted between congresses?
What would be the benefit to ICSU of the association?
Does the organization add a new scientific component to ICSU?
What is the overlap of the membership of the organization with that of other Unions?
Could the scientific discipline of the organization be integrated (or is it already) into one of the existing Union Members? If the latter, the manageability of the resulting body should be taken into consideration.
Does the range of membership indicate a truly international character (suggested minimum: 30 countries with a balanced representation in all continents)?
How many individual scientists are represented by the organization and what proportion of the total global community of scientists in the discipline are participating in the work of the organization?
Are the leading scientists in the discipline participating in the work of the organization?"

During the week-end, Gary answers these pertinent questions and returns the document, which will be distributed to the members of the SCMSS for our examination on 13 April.

13/04/99. Meeting in Paris. Presentation of overheads on IUPESM and answer to the numerous questions from the SCMSS.

19/04/99. Email from Keith: "Dear All, The reunion with ICSU was very successful but we are not there yet. To adopt an analogy of Gary' s, we have hopefully established a camp close to the top of the mountain but have not yet made it to the summit. Having spoken with ICSU, I understand that their Committee deferred a decision in order to seek a policy decision by the Executive Board on whether or not a Union including engineering and related to medicine could now become a Full Member following ICSU's own Review. I was told that the Committee had been very impressed by the professionalism, time and care taken in preparing the overheads and the content of the presentation and discussion at the meeting as well as all the information we had submitted. Not only had there been no criticism of IUPESM but also the Committee had been very impressed by our "new dynamism and enthusiasm". Specifically, I was told that we had done everything possible and that deferment of a decision on our application was entirely due to the Committee's wish for a definitive statement on policy by the Executive Board. Although considerable caution is still necessary in interpreting the new situation, at the very least we have substantially raised the profile of IUPESM within ICSU. More optimistically, we could suppose that a policy decision by the Executive Committee would be irrelevant if our application were not still being considered positively.

The Assistant Executive Director has suggested that I write an article on IUPESM for Science International, ICSU's "house journal", based on our presentation."

Keith Boddy’s article "Caring for the Human Machine into the 21st Century" appears on pages 1-3 in Newsletter No. 70 (June 1999) of the Science International (ICSU publication), which was distributed at the Budapest Conference.

31/04/99. Invitation to join the World Conference on Science (26 June – 1 July in Budapest). Joint meeting UNESCO-ICSU.

11/05/99. Email from Keith:

"Dear All, There is excellent news from the meeting of ICSU's Executive Board, which is essentially the "Incredibly Good" scenario that I outlined previously. The Board gave special consideration to our application, identified no objection in principle and proposed to the Standing Committee on Membership, Structure and Statutes (SCMSS) that we be accorded Full Membership. I understand that the SCMSS is unlikely to dispute the judgement of the more senior Executive Board.

However, the ultimate decision rests with the General Assembly in Cairo and there are prescribed steps to be taken before then. Our application is now to be circulated to all Scientific Unions and National Unions. There are presently 72 voting National Scientific Members and 25 voting International Union members below. The rules require at least 12 letters of support in total with a minimum of 3 letters from each group of Unions, viz., for example, 3 letters from the National Unions plus 9 letters from the Scientific Unions or vice versa. A positive outcome is a prerequisite for consideration by the General Assembly.

Importantly, lobbying is considered legitimate (and possibly even expected) as a sign of seriousness of the application. With your approval, we should organize and begin to lobby as soon as possible."

Since the middle of May, Gary and Keith have managed the lobbying process by first sending letters requesting support to all 97 voting organizations, then identifying the key persons and those responsible for each organization, and co-ordinating contact with the voting members of ICSU (the IFMBE members of the IUPESM AC have been particularly efficient throughout the process and mainly during the lobbying phase), as recorded in the email from Tish Bahmani Fard from ICSU Headquarters on 22 August 1999:

"Dear Keith, A brief update on letters of support received from:

Unions: IUTAM, IGU, IAU, IBRO, IUAES, IUPHAR, IUPS, IUPAC, IUPAB, IUTOX
National Members: Armenia, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, Israel, Jamaica, Japan, Lithuania, New Zealand, Pakistan, Poland, Russia, Turkey, UK.

So IUPESM is definitely in order."

26/8/99. ICSU circulated papers for the General Assembly to Member Unions. The Report of the Standing Committee on Membership, Structure and Statutes says:

"Five applications for Scientific Union Membership were received…Of these, only the application from IUPESM is presented to the Assembly for consideration. Upon the advice of the Executive Board, the SCMSS wrote to the ICSU membership to ascertain if there was sufficient support for the application (a minimum of twelve letters of support, with three each from the National Scientific Members and three from the International Scientific Union Members - Rule of Procedure 8.2 c). Such support has been received and the SCMSS recommends, therefore, that the Assembly admit the International Union for Physical and Engineering Sciences in Medicine as a full Union Member. The full application is attached."

Keith concluding his letter in IFMBE News: "I hope the next episode of this soap opera will contain good news. We can but try – but the drama is real life".

EPILOGUE in CAIRO at the end of September

(attended by Gary and Dov Jaron)

3 September 1999

Jean-Pierre Morucci

President IFMBE

Email: morucci@cict.fr