Paper's abstract

Pierre-Marie Dupuy, Biotechnologies, Human Nature, Ethics and International Law. On the legal frame for redefining scientific morals on the universal leve
For the last twelve years Unesco has developed a set of rules through the means of declarations with a view to establishing a universal body of bioethical principles. They aim at regulating the practice of biotechnologies on the basis of a combination of legal and moral rules. This provides with an opportunity to reconsider the relationship between ethics and law in a context in which the scientific definition of the human genome raises in a new perspective the very definition of the “human nature”. The conditions under which these ethico/legal rules may have a chance of being actually respected at the universal level is finally considered in the light of the Kantian legacy.

Key Words : Unesco, Kant, bioethics
t. 52, 2009 : p. 367-380

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