Available in Russian
Author: Igor Kravets
DOI: 10.21128/1812-7126-2025-3-50-75
Keywords: bioethical dignity; bioethical constitutionalism; value of life; human reproduction; bioconstitutionalism; biolaw; human biorights; bioethical rights; biojurisprudence; bioethics; constitution of life
The article proposes the concept of bioethical dignity. The author describes the international discussion and academic views on the understanding and practice of the formation of the concept of human dignity and biorights in the context of the development of the theory of bioethics, the principles of global bioethics, and international biomedical law. Thanks to the activities of UNESCO and the legal and ethical doctrines developed by the community of experts in the field of bioethics, biomedicine, and biolaw, a new legal entity has emerged since the end of the 20th — the first quarter of the 21st century — at the international, supranational, and intrastate levels. It may be referred to by different names: biolaw, biomedical law, bioethical law, or bioethics law. Bioethical dignity in the system of modern biolaw and bioethics, in human rights jurisprudence can be considered as a complex meta-legal and meta-ethical concept that arises in the doctrine of biojurisprudence and in bioethics, has partial legal consolidation as a result of formalization of the content of individual bioethical aspects of the dignity of a person, a child, the elderly, a disabled person, etc. Bioethical dignity, along with the principles of bioethics and guarantees of human rights in the field of biomedicine, is enshrined in acts of biolaw and indicates the emergence of legal biocentrism. This approach reflects the relationship between biological characteristics and social capabilities of various people. Conceptualization of bioethical dignity is associated with the process of understanding the nature, purpose, biosocial capabilities and abilities of a person in the context of the achievements of bioethics and biomedicine. Therefore, bioethical dignity contains a multi-layered perception of human nature and his attitude to other people, other living beings and the environment. The study notes that the emergence of a new paradigm of dignity is closely linked to the rise of bioethics itself during the last quarter of the 20th century and the first quarter of the 21st century. This period marked bioethics as the most relevant and responsive to the trends of the Fourth Industrial Revolution — an applied ethics that continues to interact with biomedicine, evolutionary biology, and genetics.
About the author: Igor Kravets – Doctor of Sciences in Law, Professor, Head of the Department of Constitutional and Municipal Law, Principal Researcher, Institute for the Philosophy and Law, Novosibirsk State University, Novosibirsk, Russia .
Citation:
Kravets I. (2025) Bioeticheskoe dostoinstvo v yurisprudentsii prav cheloveka i v sisteme bioprava: teoreticheskie i mezhdunarodno-pravovye aspekty [Bioethical dignity in human rights jurisprudence and in the system of biolaw: theoretical and international legal aspects]. Sravnitel'noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, vol.34, no.3, pp.50–75. (In Russian).
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