THE EUROPEAN CONVENTION ON BIOMEDICINE AND HUMAN RIGHTS: A PRAGMATIC AMBITION

Abstract

What the European Convention on Biomedicine and
Human Rights declares is very clear. While “bearing in
mind (among others) the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights proclaimed by the General Assembly
of the United Nations on 10 December 1948 (and…)
the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights
and Fundamental Freedoms of 4 November 1950”, it
also proclaims that man is “conscious of the accelerating
developments in biology and medicine”. Therefore, it
establishes a duality of time between the Human Rights
principles, which are universal, and developments in
biology and medicine which are dependent on the
course of time and its acceleration.
Experience is part of this race of time and this is experience which guided the elaboration of the European
Convention on Biomedicine and Human Rights and
this guidance involved two steps. The first one concerned
the experience acquired by the Council of Europe in
the field of medical and health ethics while the second
one attempted to harmonize legislations in the area of
reproductive technologies and human genetics. However, moving from step one to step two revealed a great
change in the approach of ethics, outing it from the
medical community to incorporate it into a public debate
related to Human Rights and social transformations.