CHAPTER 4: THE LEGAL WORLD AND THE LIFE SCIENCES: RISK SOCIETY, LAW AND DEMOCRACY

Abstract

The face-to-face between the world of law and the life sciences is heavy with implicit: fear that it will open the way to liberticidal confrontations or hope that it will be able to allay the social fears born of human intervention in living things. We therefore expect the law to organize a legal order capable of governing activities relating to the life sciences. However, this demand for legal protection and security appears to be excessive in relation to the capacities of the law. In fact, it expresses a social anxiety commensurate with the crisis that our civilization is going through