Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The positions on this issue move on a continuum ranging from ultra-conservative to the most liberal movements. In this context establishing health policies based on absolute moral systems doesn't result in political or ethical correctness in pluralistic societies like ours. For this reason, it urges the establishment of minimum agreements that allow the development of happy life projects for every person. Chile, which has a strong anti-abortion policy, needs to review their laws to ensure fair attention to all citizens. The statistics reveal that prohibition does not eliminate the practice of abortions; furthermore, it puts people who are already disadvantaged due to "the social lottery of life" in a worse situation. Paying attention to this issue and acting immediately showing in a tangible way that which has been discussed many times in our country, is a debt of justice that the Chilean state has to all women.

Mass vaccination is the collective achievement of immunization practice, using strategies such as campaigns, task forces and locks, made without considering the epidemic risks and other issues, resulting in the loss of autonomy and vulnerability of individuals. This study aims to conduct a discussion regarding the practice of mass vaccination from the perspective of bioethics principialist considered the role of the state and the cultural aspects of this practice. This is a review of literature with time frame 1999-2013 in national journals. It was concluded that occurs devaluation of ethical principles related to autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence and justice, as well as a disregard of cultural aspects of vaccinees by the state and health professionals. The state is still the biggest supporter of mass vaccination practices by being simpler measures of disease prevention since there is still a precarious health infrastructure in the country, however, although, it would be necessary to stimulate public awareness and the improvement of sanitary control that would be long-term options needed for certain places if they stopped this practice.

The utilization of human embryos in the biological research has generated a bioethical debate from the ontological point of view about whether or not to consider the embryo as a human person. This paper review the ontological statute of the human embryo from a biological perspective considering the principal lines of investigation in Latin America. Complementary to discussion we check the contribution from the legal statute of the human embryo and the position from the formal scientific research in his utilization. Finally, we consider that, in Latin America, the discussion has not been approached in a deep way about the statute of the human embryo as person, staying the discussion in a dimension of the biological thing.

Assisted reproduction techniques, in particular of heterologous type, open a variety of issues in the intersection of science, rights and subjectivity. In this paper we focus on the relation between the recently approved Argentinian legislation and the responses given by users of heterologous techniques -in this case, oocyte donation- with regard to the right to know the genetic origin. We analyse the dilemma between the law, which promotes the communication of the genetic origin to the subject born by such techniques, and the subjective factors that gravitate in the decision either to disclose the information, or keep it as a secret. Consequently, we argue that the disclosure of the genetic origin is an ethical decision, which requires the assumption of subjective responsibility. To deal with such a complex issue, we cross the data obtained in two empirical studies with theoretical contributions from legal studies, narrative bioethics, anthropology and psychoanalysis.