In the event of death, other social norms unfold because respect for the body does not disappear with death. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has given an insight into the cultural invariants in the respect due to the body of the deceased. The duty of decency that the living recognize towards the bodies of the deceased is imposed even when the person has donated his or her body to science, within a recently reinforced normative framework. During the next contract, the collection of cadaveric body parts at the request of the judicial authorities will be the subject of a renewed deontological approach through the digitization of forensic expertise resources.
Deontology and age estimation "
Human body parts raise legal and deontological issues that are being renewed as digital technology is being used in forensic expertise. We know that in France, experts who master the methods of radiological exploration for the purpose of determining age may be required by the judicial authority in the absence of valid identity documents and when the alleged age lacks plausibility. The performance of a bone age test, which most often consists of a wrist x-ray, creates moral dilemmas for the radiologist, who is faced with a dual injunction: a clinical one, which requires him or her to fulfill the duty of beneficence, and a judicial one, which demands independence and impartiality.
The risk of error is highest in the age group (16-18 years) for which these tests are most frequently requested. Hence the importance of using more sophisticated technologies to make the procedures more reliable, with new ethical and legal issues at stake (use of sensitive data). Scientific, legal and deontological, the problem of determining bone age is today renewed by the implementation of artificial intelligence systems in forensic science. Two doctoral theses have been devoted to this since September 2022, one in the BONES team, the other in the "bodies, norms, health" team.
"Ethics and identification of human remains" component
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Artificial intelligence is a tool that can also be used in the identification of cadaveric bodies. Its uses can allow to gain in reliability and accuracy in the identification of human remains, during deaths following the shipwrecks of migrant populations. The object of study of the BONES team, the new processes of cadaveric identification respond to strong moral and psychological expectations of the families of the deceased. Hence the relevance of developing an inter-team axis around the estimation of age in the living and the identification of human remains.
Several researchers in ethics and law who are associated with the project "Deontology, age estimation, body identification, management of bone remains" are present on the board of the "Laënnec" establishment of excellence, an institute in "digital sciences and artificial intelligence (AI) for health"
directed by the Vice President Delegate for Digital Infrastructures and AI for Research at AMU. This institutional matrix is a guarantee of funding for young researchers in ethics and law who have organized themselves within this institution of excellence around a research cluster called "Human Sciences, Ethics and Law".
In the 2024-2029 period, the team will continue a national collaboration initiated at the end of the previous contract on "Human remains: ethical and normative issues", in the continuity of the seminar of the national working group on the implementation of protocols for the collection and analysis of human bone and the conservation of samples (PAOHCE). At the request of the person in charge of the management of the scientific data of archaeology at the Ministry of Culture, the BONES and Corps, normes, santé teams participated in a national colloquium at the Faculty of Medical Sciences of Marseille on June 23-24, 2022. This partnership activity with the Ministry of Culture is an opportunity to address the issue of the restitution of human remains collections to their original peoples, which is a source of ethical and legal controversy about their status and their context of acquisition. Having acquired the qualification of heritage goods, human remains are at the center of a debate that articulates different national legal regimes, ethical principles, international charters and conventions. The practices of conservation, exhibition or restitution are carried out in France according to the Civil Code and the law on bioethics of 2021. In view of the skills it brings together, the CORNOR team has full legitimacy to intervene on these subjects which are very little documented by the human sciences in France to date.