La presencia de la bioética en el proyecto de Constitución europea

Resumen

So far, human rights in relation with Biomedicine and Biotechnology were included in some recent national laws and in some few international declarations, but they had restricted infl uence in internal rights. So the European Constitution project is a first step and it aims to get incorporated in State Members internal legislations. Some of nowadays widely discussed biomedical problems are specifi cally mentioned in it. It confirms a rising trend in constitutional law towards regulating genetic and bioethical topics, because they deal with the kind of rights and freedoms linked with the basic principles that Constitutions usually develop. It does not attempt an ordered and systematic regulation of juridical problems which Biomedicine now involves. It only proposes a small number of rights and restrictions, situated among human dignity rights (to get informed before consent, the unavailability of human body, and the prohibition of reproductive cloning and sex selection). It also approves freedom of research and freedom of worship, and denies genetic features discrimination. Nevertheless, while trading and taxes are major topics en European Constitution project Biomedicine and other human rights are secondary topics.