14.05.2025

Is the protection of human rights the ethical standard or is ethics the standard of human rights?

The field of human rights is enriched with new valences every time a new area of research related to the human being and a new context for what we define as human life is born. Irrespective of the potentially dangerous situations that will arise in the future for individuals or for mankind as a result of new biomedical applications, which at this point in time could not even be imagined, if we succeed in establishing the basis of principles and the procedural framework of the regulations that will apply to them, obviously starting from those that already exist, we would achieve the aim of ensuring the protection of human rights within an ethical framework.

A pragmatic approach to the protection of human rights, in the context of biomedical applications, in particular the regulation of situations raising bioethical issues in general, should start from the regulator's answer to the following two questions: is respect for ethical principles a priority in regulation? If so, is the protection of human rights generally accepted as prioritised and sufficient for the protection of the values claimed in bioethics?

It is a common truth that the philosophical-political vision of the regulator (be it national or international) leads to the application of a certain type of solution to the conflicts that it is intended to resolve. Different visions mean different solutions to the same conflict. Expressing the degree of liberalism or conservatism of these visions mathematically, we can plot it on an axis from 0 to ∞, where 0 is prohibition without exceptions and ∞ is no restriction at all, as in the figure below.

0 ------------------------------------------------------------------∞ (Fig.1)

 A good example is the use of human cloning for medical purposes. In fact, human cloning obviously means first of all the identical reproduction of a human cell and then of a cloned embryo.

At this moment, human cloning is at 0 on the axis, being banned both at international level, through a convention dedicated to this subject, most countries having a ban without exceptions at national level, which is also true for our country. However, the endless possibilities that the biomedical applications tangential to the cloning of human cells/embryos offer for biomedicine and which promise spectacular solutions for certain genetically transmitted diseases, for example, lead many researchers^[1]to call for a reconsideration, a nuancing of the ban or, in other words, a move one step (at least) closer to ∞. We appreciate that, as genetics will make it common territory to modify the genes of human embryos for medical and other purposes, there will be only one step left before human cloning is legalised. That step will be taken in the next 20-30 years, and the cursor will move to ∞.

Another example is the regulation of abortion. For as long as there was no medical possibility of a safe abortion induced by the woman herself, this intimate matter, which is part of a woman's private life, was inevitably taken out of the space of her private life and brought into the public arena, whether we are talking about the situation where a woman tried to have an empirical abortion herself and failed, with complications, or about a legal battle for the right to abortion to be recognised so that the woman could benefit from the services of medical professionals. Once this issue was brought into the public domain, the regulator could decide, according to its philosophical-moral vision translated into political terms by the laws in force on the subject: from the ultra-conservative version of a total and total ban on abortion without exceptions (as is the case in Ireland and Poland), close to 0 on the axis, to the ultra-liberal, totally permissive version, in response to decades of bans, which existed in Romania from 26 December 1989 to 14 November 1996^[2] , at ∞ on the axis.

With the advent of a biomedical novelty (in this case a substance), which allows the woman to induce abortion in a way that is safe for her health, but at the same time respects her privacy and right to privacy during the abortion manoeuvres (such as the RU-486 pill), as well as opening the door to future more effective options for the same purpose, the criterion for moving the slider on the axis has changed. Conservatism or liberalism will in the future have to relate to a woman's right to privacy of her home (where she will ingest the abortion drugs), her mail (if the pill is delivered by mail), etc., because otherwise the regulator will no longer have access to the situation to find the situation to ban it .^[3]

In all cases, however, no matter where regulation lies on the 0-∞ axis, its authors can claim, with convincing arguments, that they have respected ethical principles: in the case of ultra-conservatism, they will claim to respect the principle of non-harm by protecting the foetus, because it is given priority over the mother, and ultra-liberals will claim to respect the same principle of non-harm by protecting the life of the mother in all respects, including social, when abortion is determined by social rather than medical considerations.

An article by Victor Dobozi (vdobozi@stoica-asociatii.ro), Partner, STOICA & ASOCIAȚII.