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

This text proposes a number of reflections that issue fron the recent advancements that have taken place in investigations on the Human Genoma Project, which lead to the accelerated reinforcement of biomedical knowledge and technologies. The new statements upon human species' biological nature, legitimated by these new progress, allow us to reexamine the mythological and metaphysical explanations accumulated for millenia, facing a new philosophical anthropology. The advancements of medical science's interventions upon health and quality of life, allow us to evaluate again the legitimateness of a quantity of new biomedical possibilities. This text touches, too, in a particular way, the subject of cloning and it's different economic and political aspects.

Bioethics' interdisciplinary interchange, difficult and arduous, is this article's aim. First of all in relation to bioethics' fortuitous novelty and creativity from the mind's point of view. Essentially this reflection develops within philosophy's field, through a question that guides its analysis: what does bioethics add to the traditional ethical debate that has taken place in the midst of all cultures? In second place, through a sociological type of view, on the space that bioethics occupies in a multifunctional society. In this perspective, this text questions itself on the possibility of developing a bioethics concept that involves the whole society, that is, that it generates the same legitimacy and esteem in all sectors functionally differenciated.

The basic philosophical vision and ethical principles of Catholic Natural Law claim universality. Natural Law thinking aspires to objectivity and universality and at the same time is open to the continuing influence from history and politics. The background principles of positive law historically go by the name of Natural Law.Suffering and injustice contribute to a vision both of the structure of human existence and of what we mean by humane law and ethics. When we confront a cultural crisis, Natural Law, looks not to the past but to the future. Few people today talk of the ethical dimensions of social realities in terms of Natural Law. This is true both in the Church and in the State. In bioethics, the principles rooted in the universal structure of human life have to provide direction and regulations on the playing field of contemporary life and medicine. A liberal Catholic perspective tries to keep in play the universal and the particular aspects of Natural Law reasoning.

Este artículo analiza el discurso bioético y su propuesta de mediación en los conflictos morales en el terreno de la salud. Defiende la importancia de las teorías bioéticas reconocieren los principios de la incertidumbre y de la suficiencia de lo real como forma de promoción de la tolerancia moral.

The difficulty to achieve full participation and social integration of people with handicap is recognized at world level, situation that involves fundamental ethical values. The application of bioethic principles directed towards the professional chore under a new paradigm will signify an important contribution.Bioethic dilemmas, such as informed consent and the person's participation in making decisions that affect his own life, imply a challenge, the delivery of appropiate and opportune information, the development of professional behaviors that will favor the autonomy and recognition of these people as valid speakers.As to the subject of sexuality, professionals should allow everybody's integral development, recognizing sexuality as the human being's fundamental aspect, and faced to which you/they are entitled to be guided and educated taking into account their biographical history and what each one expects of his life (self determination). Therefore, they should be considered fundamental bioethic principles, such as Justice and Autonomy.

The desire of knowledge, one of man's most important goals, there are also mixed wishes of other type, like ambition or competition, which can deviate him from his uninterested objectives. That is why there are many people who throw a suspect on this libido sciendi that has become a libido dominandi where the legal valorization of power and the idolatry of progress are combined. It will be the ethic comisions or comites to play a calming function that can work as a boundary to this cultural anguish.However, these possible deviations must not only be atributed to the desire of knowing in itself, but to the social system, which, troughout the institutions, compels investigators to compete among themselves with projects and publications, and obliges them to enter either into an economic competition or into an international confrontation in order to obtain recognition.As members of a scientific comunity, with its own interests, it is necessary for us to defend the autonomy of this libido cognoscendi in front of those who take social decisions, in the measure that economical resources for investigation depend on them. Uninterested investigation is still very important for the cultural wellfare of society, but it is important to be on guard, as man is not only in the centre of investigations, but also of its applications.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the statute of human life from conception on, finding a justification in the current complex political-juridical crisis, documented in a particularly emblematic way in the negligent attitude of legislation, including Brasilian legislation, in view of the technological innovations in the biomedical domain. The general aim is to demonstrate that, even though knowledge in the areas of clinical embryology and medical genetics dispel any doubts regarding the beginning of human individuality, ethical and juridical reflections, when based on premises that are discordant with "human nature", darkening obscure the personal quality the human being expresses from the time of his conception. In other words, the general aim is related with the demonstration that one can only talk about law and ethics, going beyond approaches devoid of content, when he is oriented towards a reflective attitude in accordance with human nature.