From the Universal Declaration on the human genome to the international legal regulation of genomic research and technology: idea and reality
Valentina Lapaeva · Gosudarstvo i pravo · 2020
The modern society headlong transition to the genomics era is accompanied by a dangerous lagging the genomic research and technology socio-normative regulation from the progress of genetic engineering, which carries not only colossal opportunities for the medicine development, but also existential risks for humanity. It is long overdue to move the socio-normative regulation of this sphere from the level of international declarations and recommendations to the level of global legal agreements. However, progress in this direction is blocked by an exceptionally high degree of competition between countries and transnational pharmaceutical giants. It is significant that in the Universal Declaration on the Human Genome the most controversial problem of genomics, related to the possibility of human germ line editing, is not even indicated. At the moment this problem requires special attention from the scientific community, including scientists in the field of jurisprudence specializing in the philosophy of law, medical law and legal support of the modern technologies.