Deontology and Bioethics

Legal rules, religious rules, ethical rules. The deontology. Connections between legal and deontological rules. The Codes of Ethics. Introduction to legal rules. The separation of powers. The principal levels of production of legal rules. The efficacy of legal rules in time. The most important types of sources of legal rules: Constitution, constitutional laws, ordinary laws, decree-laws, legislative decrees, regional laws, regulations for enforcement of laws, European regulations and directives. The antinomies between sources of law and their solution. The legal rules for the profession of biologist. Legal rules for animal experimentation: European and national rules.

The teaching aims to provide fundamental elements to understand the main and often controversial issues of bioethical debate. Specifically, the following subjects will be addressed. Origin of bioethics: Why is it born and what are the new issues at the core of debate? Main normative ethics theories in the bioethics reasoning: teleological ethics, deontological ethics, virtue ethics. Bioethics and research ethics: scientific research on human beings and informed consent (I); scientific research on human embryos with attention to embryonic stem cells (II); Framework programme for research and innovation (2014-2020) in Europe, H2020, art. 19 Ethical principles (III). Bioethics and the enlargement of moral consideration circle: Animal ethics and scientific research on non human animals; environmental ethics and preservation of nature.