Bioética. El final del consenso

Abstract

The Oviedo Convention proved in 1997 how difficult could be an international agreement concerning the regulation of biomedical research, particularly the limits of research on human embryos. Some bioethical issues show the plurality of doctrines and moral systems; moreover they could detect the end of the consensus's era. It could be the end of the pax bioetica, which determined the wide success of the discipline during three decades. Building bridges, building consensus had been a very valuable contribution of the bioethical discourse, and of the new bioethical experts, indeed. Since the seventies, Liberal principles and Pragmatic attitudes were the implicit core of their ideology, a kind of ,American' consensus to build frontiers against the political, or radical ideologies. Now the enlarged agenda of Bioethics and its international expansion are undermining the basic consensus, though. A political turn of Bioethics could probably offer some agreements around specific issues. That kind of consensus would adjust to citizens needs and to the new context, global and local; a «republican» consensus, so to say. The article analyses the transition from the consensus's era �the building of bridges, the common principles, the «thin» procedures� to the plural agreements �contextual, «thick�, taking account of the plurality in moral values and of the cultural frontiers.