Derechos de las personas en relación con la salud.Fundamentación jurídica en el ordenamiento español

Resum

The evolution of the concept of health has motivated its consideration as a human activity that although is highly recognised cannot escape from the authority of the law. This activity needs the introduction of mechanisms that order the professional practice and that protect the patient and his deep-seated rights in his relationship with the National Health Service. The technological and scientific development of biomedical sciences in the last quarter of the 20th century has resulted in a consideration about the sense and limits of these advances, giving way to the appearance of patients´ �new� rights. The need of overcoming the �Medical paternalism� and the maturity of the Western countries as for the validity of individual rights, together with an autonomous notion of the inherited selfdetermination that comes from Modernism have reduced this self-determination to an absolute individual free will and have produced the prevalence of the Principle of Autonomy as a bio-judicial criteria that prevails in the development of these rights. The importance of the Principle of Autonomy, that became paradigmatically visible in the demand of the �informed approval�, has been transformed into the process of bio-legislative production, although its reception by the Spanish law system has resulted in a lot of inconveniences. Only a normative and realistic task based on the sacred dignity of the human being can join the legitimate right of the autonomy of the individual as a fundamental aspect of his individual freedom with the assurance of another fundamental rights related to his health.