Bioethics and law: the problem of regulation

No abstractContemporary awareness about bioethics reflects the need of taking concrete decisions, in order to regulate the effects of biological applications. However, there is a reasonable skepticism on whether any kind of regulation, and particularly a legal one, of bioethical issues, is acceptable or even possible given their delicate moral nature. The thesis of this paper is that a positive answer to this question is dependent on certain conditions. Thus, a regulation of such issues could be proved meaningful, under the condition that we avoid imposing coercive rules within the sphere of personal antonomy; instead it is more effective to promote or encourage the socially desirable. For that purpose, a suitable means could be the use of rules of a ‘permissive’ kind. It is also crucial for the content of such rules to take into account the deontology of biological research. A legal regulation, especially, could be effective if it focuses on the impact of technology on specific social relations rather than on a generally described context. Moreover, legal regulation is expected to reveal the utility of legality as a real· interest of modern technological progress