Biolaw: Sources, Principles and Doctrine

About

Specificity and singularity of bioethical and biojuridical problems, arisen by virtue of biotechnological advancements, call for specific norms, well defined deliberative criteria, and theoretical and procedural guidelines (principles) to give content to biomedical action and, in that fashion, to carry it out with hope but also with precaution. In this course the students will learn that bioethics is not only a new theoretical perspective to deliberate on complex moral scenarios arisen by virtue of biomedical and biotechnological empowerment but also and very especially it implies a set of procedural rules to guide decision-making in a completely new ethical arena. However, bioethics has not been exempt from criticism and the epistemological and methodological scope of its principles is still profusely discussed. For this reason, we will see how biolaw provides deliberative and normative criteria to address the problem of which biomedicine´s limits and scopes should be. Thus, in the first part of the course, the students will learn the main elements of the origins, foundations and problems of bioethics as well as they will be able to deliberate, in a critical and impartial way, on controversial bioethical issues still unresolved.

The second part of the course aims to critically analyze the epistemological and methodological development of European Biolaw, by proposing a new definition for the discipline as well as extending and enhancing deliberative criteria for the solution of biolegal problems. Finally, we will justify a new biojuridical approach of new problems arisen in biomedical field as well as to recognize new ethical-juridical categories to identify new subjective individual rights related to genetic and biomedical practices which we will call “"biorights"” or "fourth generation human rights".

Course leader

Dr. Erick Valdés

Fee info