Chapitre 2. The promise and limits of international bioethics: lessons from the recent revision of the Declaration of Helsink

Abstract

Is the current quest to develop an ‘international bioethics’ likely to succeed, or is bioethics so conditioned by regional and national socio-cultural factors that the boundaries between nations or groups of similar nations make a truly international bioethics impossible? The recent revision of the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki illustrates both the potential for and the limits of international consensus on bioethical issues.