Palazzani, Laura2023-11-292023-11-292020http://159.69.0.167/jspui/handle/123456789/592"The acceleration of scientific discoveries and technological applications opens up new possibilities for interventions on human life at different stages of development, in different existential conditions. The techno-scientific development raises ethical questions which require an urgent epistemological and philosophical reflection. Due to an anthropological and ethical pluralism, the answers to the techno-scientific questions may be very different. Moral positions differ as far as the justification of principles and values is concerned, and also, with regard to the justification of the balancing of values in conflicting situations. The problematic techno-scientific development on the one hand and, at the same time, the ethical pluralism on the other, give rise to new issues concerning regulation, on a national and international level. There is an increasing need in present day society all over the world for a certain kind of ‘governance’, through juridical regulations, related to scientific and technological progress. It aims to regulate new and emerging rights, above all at the beginning of life (reproductive technologies, genetic diagnosis, genetic manipulations) and end of life (euthanasia, living will, therapeutic obstinacy), in the field of cure and experimentation (with a specific focus on vulnerable populations, as children, women, immigrants) and in the so called emerging technologies (gene-editing, neurosciences, ICT, robotics, artificial intelligence). The focus of the book is the analysis, on a theoretical and practical level, of all the main bioethical and biolegal issues of the present discussion. On the level of theories, the main perspectives are analysed: the focus is the critical analysis of the libertarian, and the utilitarian theorization, and the foundation of the personalist model, which is grounded on the ontological recognition of the human being as a person. According to the personalist model, biolaw and governance cannot and should not be neutral, that is, without ethics, in the context of ethical pluralism. The personalist perspective thematises the doctrine of human rights as rooted in the principle of equality, recognizing that each human being, for the fact of being human, cannot become the object of discrimination. Each human being must be treated as a subject having an intrinsic dignity irrespective of other extrinsic considerations, related to the stage of psycho-physical development reached or the capabilities and abilities they express, such as self-determination (in the libertarian and liberal perspective) or the perception of a certain quality of life (in the utilitarian approach). This is the epistemological effort, particularly complex in bioethics, necessary for the recognition of rights at the borders of life, in front of the rapid progress of biomedical science and technology. The pointthat needs a special reflection is the recognition of the dignity of those who - due to accidental or provisional reasons, such as age, phase of development or conditions of illness, temporary or stable - are not able to carry out certain abilities or do so weakly, thus becoming particularly vulnerable and fragile when faced with the pressures of the progress made in biotechnology toward ‘perfection’."itBioéticaArtes y HumanidadesArticle