International Journal of Bioethics

The legal and bioethical regulation of the uses of the elements of the human body can be described by means of the concept of solidarity. From the French example, we can so show that the State tries to frame solidarities which already exist, for example between people who share the same genome, in the family, or, on the contrary, tent to impose or to direct the sharing of the human biological resources (organs, tissues, gametes, stem cell...).

This paper assesses the decision making patterns in medical ethics: the formalized pattern of decision science, the meditative pattern of an art of judgement and lastly the still-to-be-elaborated pattern of kairology or sense of the right time. The ethical decision is to be thought out in the conditions of medical action while resorting to the philosophical concepts that shed light on the issue. And it is precisely where medicine and philosophy of human action meet that the Greek notion of kairos, or "propitious moment", evokes the critical point where decision has to do with what is vital...

The role of health agencies in the field of biomedicine does not appear today anymore as a question of systemic approach but much more as a question of implementing the bioethical principles acknowledged in the legislation and by the different stake-holders of the biomedical techniques.

Taking into account their acquired experience, would not health agencies become the place where biomedical practices will be managed on an every day basis? Would in a near future these agencies have the role to interprete the principles of the bioethics law to adapt them to concrete issues?

To alert consists in informing about a danger in order to avoid any aggravation. When health or environment public authorities submit such an alert, it isn't questioned nor subject to a problem of legitimacy. However, the State does not have the exclusive right to watch, and whistleblower alerts are more and more often submitted by citizens who attempt to disclose public interest information. The legal protection of these alerts by citizens is not clear so these unusual denunciations need to be legally framed...

"Conflicts of interests" is a multi-meaning expression. To give a juridical concept is not easy because this concept is applied in public and private law. Maybe this is the reason of not having a law giving a valid definition in any case In health area, a conflict of interests is present many times, i.e. at the beginning of a research, when informing its results, etc. This conflict of interests may affect different aspects of the research work, economic or not; sometimes totally or partially. The economic resources is one of the most common reasons of the conflict of interests...

This paper considers the conflict of interest in philosophical and legal perspective. The philosophical approach comes from two perspectives: political philosophy focuses on the role of the link of interest in the city considered in the light of a broader reflection on the conditions of living together. Antiquity philosophers have enhanced the interest link as privileged vector of humanization and socialization of individuals. In the eighteenth century, Adam Smith considers the pursuit of individual interests a stronger social base that love of neighbor advocated by Christians...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Natura 2000 network, established by the Habitats directive, states that "any plan or project likely to have a significant effect on a Natura 2000 site, shall undergo an appropriate assessment to determine its implications for the site". The safeguards set out in this article are triggered not by a certainty but by a likelihood of significant effects. The paradox clearly appears: the significant implications of a project can be assessed only through an impact assessment process. So the administration and the judge are asked, inevitably, to participate to the building of the definition of practical aspect of expertise...

The relation between experts and civil society raises profound questioning. The first of them is the role of civil society in their evaluation work and in their research. We note that the involvement of citizen leds not only to build scientifical questions, but also to enrich and to answer them. In that way, civil society becomes a key player and an irreplaceable actor of the scientific research. This article highlights action carry out by the Centre d'Etudes et de Soins pour les Tortues Marines of the Aquarium La Rochelle which asks civil society to help it everydays to fulfill his duties...

The management and conservation of fish stocks require precise scientific knowledge, especially on the state of said stocks and their capacity for renewal. For instance, the setting of fishing "quotas", which consists in the determination of the quantity of fish that can be taken in a given period, cannot be done at random since these allocations represent environmental and economic stakes. Thus, decision makers logically call upon experts to adopt informed decisions. Consequently, various regional fisheries Commissions created Scientific Committees, which were associated to their work to have available knowledge on a permanent basis...

Access to scientific knowledge in the context of CITES is a crucial issue. The effectiveness of the text is indeed largely based on adequate scientific knowledge of CITES species. This is a major challenge: more than 30,000 species and 178 member states are involved. The issue of expertise, however, is not really addressed by the Convention. The question was left to the consideration of the COP. Therefore, the COP has created two ad hoc scientific committees: the Plants Committee and the Animals Committee, conferring upon them an ambitious mandate...

Filling an identified gap, the establishment of an international mechanism for science/policy and expert/decision maker interface, in the field of biodiversity does not go so smoothly. This new institution is the result of a relatively long and arduous international negotiations process, the starting point having been an idea launched in Paris in 2005 at an international conference on biodiversity and supported by President Chirac. The "Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services" (IPBES) is part of a legal and institutional landscape very complex and fragmented...

The purpose of this paper is to make the link between expertise and biodiversity through the civil liability Law. Indeed, since Erika Case (Cour de Cassation, Crim. 25 septembre 2012), this Law recognised the ecological damage. This one is defined as an damage caused to Nature and especially Biodiversity. Thus, the expertise has to play a major role. In this paper, two roles are studied: first all all, the expertise allows to assess the damage of Biodiversity itself, to define and to prove it. Secondly, the expertise is an instrument which is very important for prescribing the measures of compensation, in kind or pecuniary compensation...

Environmental ethic is complex, dynamic, and related to cultural contexts that are neither given once and for all, nor valid for all people. Yet, the current biodiversity crisis tends to be followed by the spread of universal values related to nature and its protection. Far from standardizing the pluralism of these values, this universal trend leads to two major tensions in the field of nature conservation. The first concerns the scientific or epistemic values: nature or "biodiversity" is altogether being reduced in sub-categories or by contrast considered as a complex object by modern ecological science...

What is the connection among scientific knowledge and public decision, at international, european and national level, in the field of biodiversity ? Firmly believing in the relevance of legal tools, we wanted to call into question the phenomenom of the massive externalization of scientific expertise in order, perhaps, to determine the conditions of a better guidance of the use of the latter. This article is presenting the results of a research witch have received the support of the "Fondation de Recherche pour la Biodiversité" (FRB)...

The participation of the public in the elaboration of politics has become unavoidable in most countries. The Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights of UNESCO, adopted by the General conference in 2005, makes the public a paramount aspect in the decision making in bioethics. In the case of explanatory research, based on political analysis and guidelines on the newborn screening programs from different countries, we have examined how the "public" is defined (who is the public?), what are the levels of privileged engagement, and what are the objectives sought out by this public participation? In general terms, we have noticed that the terms "consultation", "engagement", "participation" and "partnership" are often used as though they were synonymous, that the "public" is rarely well defined and that the levels of engagement from the public are variable...

The purpose of this research, led in the wake of years of pressure to reject paternalism, was to study whether controlled practice of nonverbal communication by doctors inheres a continued risk of paternalistic attitudes in oncology clinic interviews (chosen to illustrate the doctor-patient relationship). This study involved qualitative descriptive research based on interview observations and questionnaires and mobilized recognized theory borrowed from sociology and anthropology. We found that the legislative framework governing the doctor-patient relationship has simply shifted the paternalism issue from verbal communication over to a new area that doctors have not yet mastered and patients have not yet understood, i...

This topic is part of the global issue concerning the necessity to adapt intellectual property law to constant changes in technology. The relationship between robots and IP is dual. On one hand, the robots may be regarded as objects of intellectual property. A robot, like any new machine, could qualify for a protection by a patent. A copyright may protect its appearance if it is original. Its memory, like a database, could be covered by a sui generis right. On the other hand, the question of the protection of the outputs of the robot must be raised...

Nowadays, medical robots become more and more important to better provide care, to remote patients and help to perform surgery. Legal et ethical issues relating to health care robots are not new, but are more complicated, in particular about the assignation of liabilitiy. This article will give an overview of some of the legal issues relating the use of robotics in health care and medical and surgical procedures: first in relation to the safety of these specific devices, and then in relation to the threats to privacy and individual liberties...