Η μετάβαση από τη βιοηθική στο βιοδίκαιο

Abstract

The results of biomedical and biotechnology applications influence social relations and have an impact on the shaping of new institutions, changing representations and social meanings as to individuals and kinship, illness and therapy, life and death. Societies have always been concerned with the reproduction of the social group, not only of man. They have conceived of ways to ensure their biological and social continuity and, when dealing with the problem of the ‘biological unhappiness’ of man, have all adopted the supremacy of social considerations and legal regulations over any biological concern, giving countless solutions, the only exception being reproductive cloning. Society modifies and changes social institutions. The old norm is replaced by the new. However, the shaping of new institutions, moral imperatives and legal rules is not entirely the outcome of citizens’ participation in choices and decisions on fundamental social issues, such as human reproduction and cloning. Independent committees and authorities cannot substitute citizens’ participation in the processes of a democratic society. Public discussion on bio- ethical issues raised by the applications of biomedicine and biotechnology gathered momentum under the pressure of events and new practices; the result was the formulation of conflicting opinions between ‘technophiles’ and ‘technophobes’ that led the social world to look for a reference framework of ethical rules at first, then of legal rules. The problems of the above applications, progressively accumulating, require a global and open tackling, as the period of self-regulation with flexible codes of ethics, of agreements on conventional practices and of legislators in waiting for scientific developments, has definitely elapsed. The 1990s were a crucial period. Starting with the issue of whether cloning was permissible, it would seem that there is a transition from bioethics to bio-law and from the provisions of soft law to the provisions of hard law both in national and international legal systems. The result is the prohibition of reproductive cloning by all legislative orders.