The idea of human dignity plays a significant role in contemporary moral and (or) political philosophy, especially on the issues of human life and human rights. J. Rachels (1990) argued however that “Darwinism leads inevitably to the abandonment of the idea of human dignity and the substitution of a different sort of ethic”. According to Rachels, Darwinism undermines the doctrine of man’s specialness and lends support to moral individualism - a new ethic which promises to give an equal concern for the welfare of all beings, if without any relevant distinction. On this account Darwinism poses a challenge to any moral theory based on human dignity. Despite his resort to Darwinism Rachels fails, as I will argue, to undermine the idea of human dignity for Darwinism does suggest a morally relevant distinction between humans and non-human animals.

Biobanking practices raised a number of ethical challenges. Those challenges concern the participating individuals’ trust, confidentiality regarding their personal information and the question of who should benefit from commercial gains arising from genomic research, issues of privacy, informed consent, traceability and the feedback of participating research subjects and issues of international collaboration. Some of the many challenges are included: consent forms did not strictly follow international standards. The situation of national standards for China was unclear. There was no quality control for some sample collection and processing. There were no facilities with well-controlled environmental conditions to store samples permanently or the trust of public etc. We now have the opportunity to discuss the ethical issues of Chinese biobank from the Chinese point of view, while biobank is developing; rather doing so after it is developed.

In the XXI century interest in the nanotechnologies directed on the solution of the most various problems in industrial, military, medical and other spheres, defining futurological projects of the development of modern mankind sharply increases. At the same time, occurring ‘nanotechnological revolution’ announces itself not only as radical change of our ideas of the world, opening between quantum mechanics and a macrocosm of the new phenomena, but also demands social, humanitarian and ethical examination of the consequences and risks from the introduction and the use of nanotechnologies, intervention in the thinnest natural nanostructures similar to the neural processes of a brain, penetration of nanoparticles into cellular membranes, lungs, bronchial tubes and their hits in a human body, as the people who work at such productions - and through food, precipitation, air etc. Nanoscience and nanotechnologies, bringing new measurement and understanding of the modern world, cause some kind of social order for the development of special interdisciplinary area of research - the nanoethics directed on the judgment of debatable problems, generated by the latest developments of a nanoscience and nanotechnologies, search and justification of moral ethical principles and nanoresearches, an assessment of the social consequences of practical introduction and the use of nanotechnologies.

One of the remarkable tendencies of scientific and technological progress during the last decades consists in a rapidly growing development and the use of new technologies for interventions into human beings; usually these interventions performed by means of biomedical technologies (and to the essential extent by modern information and communication technologies). Fields of application of such technologies are the human body and/or mind. We can term these technologies as human-directed, taking into account the fact of their directedness not so much by humans as to humans. The shift towards the human being as the main target of technological and engineering activities generates many ethical problems. There are some areas inside and nearby individual human existence, which are the most appropriate for effective application of human-directed technologies. I shall call them ‘boundary’, or ‘transitory zones’. The simplest example is a zone between human life and death. This zone can be thought of as a span of indefiniteness between two states of an individual human existence: definitely alive and definitely dead. In comparison with both these adjacent spaces, the span is extremely a thin one. Interventions performed in these transitory zones brings forth, along with biological, medical, technological problems, a lot of social, legal and ethical dilemmas. In other words, this boundary zone is fraught not only with promising scientific and technological advances, but with the attendant and often rather difficult ethical choices.

The idea of integrative bioethics undoubtedly represents both an intellectual product of the region of Southeast Europe and a certain novum, most certainly when it comes to the theoretical and practical limits of bioethics, which streams from principles. The conceptual footholds of integrative bioethics are characterized by historical-philosophical connections to an intellectual heritage of most European thinkers. This paper will, thus, focus on three authors: St. Francis of Assisi, Fritz Jahr and Albert Schweitzer. Their intentions can generally be defined as a search for guidelines − non-anthropocentric, non-reciprocal and not simply formal ones − which should underline our everyday actions. The intended overview wishes to provide grounds for a reconstruction of the specific tradition of bioethics thought in Europe. This overview also wishes to emphasize the history of an idea rather than its geographical settings. Nevertheless, the idea of integrative bioethics reveals itself as a solid alternative to the reduced, principle-oriented bioethics that has grown from an effort embedded in the works of North America’s authors.

L’annonce évangélique de la bonne nouvelle “un enfant nous est né“ continue à résonner à l’occasion de chaque naissance, selon Hannah Arendt. Ainsi l’image du nouveau-né sous-tend, chez Arendt, le concept de natalité, c’est-à-dire qu’à chaque naissance commence non seulement l’histoire d’une autre vie mais aussi l’histoire d’une vie nouvelle, promesse de nouvelles initiatives, de nouveaux commencements. Chaque personne est en lui-même un nouveau commencement. Ce caractère fondamental de la natalité n’est-il pas occulté par les technologies reproductives, notamment avec la programmation génétique? En effet, les enjeux de biotechnologies – en l’occurrence la capacité de modifier physiquement et génétiquement l’existant humain, la possibilité pour l’homme de changer radicalement sa perception de son propre être et la croissance des attentes vis-à-vis de la médecine même dans le cas le plus désespéré – donnent à penser: jusqu’à quel niveau l’homme peut-il aller dans l’intervention sur son propre génome? A quel aune faut-il distinguer une vie qui vaut d’être vécu de celle qui ne le vaut pas? Quelles sont les normes morales qu’il convient d’appliquer aux sciences du vivant y compris la médecine? Quelles implications morales faut-il tirer de la sentence un enfant nous est né, un enfant nous est donné?

Practices of normalization were the subject of philosophical attention of M. Foucault. Normalization is the mechanism that turns knowledge into power. This idea can be used in bioethics to explain its regulatory content. Bioethics is multidimensional, and, therefore, has many definitions. Callahan highlighted the theoretical, clinical, normative and cultural Bioethics (Callahan 1995). In the normative and cultural Bioethics moral choice involves an ideological, social context. Foucault’s structuralist methodology pointed out the historical conditioning of epistemes, which become the basis for constructing the power relations in society. If the ideas of what is normal historically and culturally are relative, then how is the norm stated in Bioethics? The subject of bioethical debates can be understood as a question: what is considered normal in relation to life and death of a man, his nature? For the representatives of conservative Bioethics liberal position in an excuse of ‘abnormal’. A need for a child can be perceived in society either as a norm or deviation from norm depending on family type, method of reproduction, the concept of ‘own’ child, sex-role functions of male and female in gamete donation. After normalization of value in Bioethics proceeds its socialization. Social stability is an absolute value, therefore the norms that may conflict with individual choice, but help to preserve unity in the community are supported.

Аксиологическая сущность биоэтики обусловлена антропологическим поворотом в науке. Центральная проблема биоэтики – формирование в общественном сознании аксиологии жизни – иерархически организованной системы ценностей, главной из которых является жизнь человека, а в качестве подчиненных выступают ценности, наполняющие жизнь смыслом, делающие ее полноценной, дающие силы и стимул жить. Предмет, основные категории и основополагающие принципы биоэтики как формы научного социального знания имеют социально-аксиологическую сущность, которая выражается наличием в биоэтике социально и культурно обусловленных ценностей, формирующих в обществе отношение к жизни и здоровью человека и направляющих вектор гуманистического развития науки и медицины. Выделение на основе ценностного подхода проблем, связанных, вопервых, с реализацией норм и принципов врачебной этики, во-вторых, с актуализацией гендерных аспектов сохранения здоровья и благополучия человека, в-третьих, с аксиологическим обоснованием человеческой жизни – определяет основные направления исследования биоэтики.

Το κύριο θέμα της ανακοίνωσης είναι να διερευνήσουμε την υπόθεση της δίκης του Άιχμαν στην Ιερουσαλήμ. Τα ερωτήματα που προκύπτουν από τη γενοκτονία των Εβραίων είναι πολύ σημαντικά και εμπίπτουν στο πεδίο της ηθικής. Τα ηθικά ζητήματα της υπόθεσης αυτής αφορούν το βασανισμό των ανθρώπων και τη στέρηση της ζωής. Ο κύριος στόχος αυτής της ανακοίνωσης είναι να υπογραμμίσει το ζήτημα της αξίας της ανθρώπινης ζωής. Ένα άλλο θέμα που προσεγγίζεται εδώ είναι το πού βρίσκονται ακριβώς τα όρια μεταξύ του καλού και του κακού στις ανθρώπινες πράξεις και υπό ποίες συνθήκες αναφύονται τα ολοκληρωτικά καθεστώτα.

Η παρούσα ανακοίνωση εξετάζει τα ηθικά και θεολογικά ζητήματα που εγείρει η πρακτική της παρένθετης μητρότητας, δηλαδή μια μορφή παρεμβατικής γονιμοποίησης. Όσον αφορά τα ηθικά ζητήματα ο προβληματισμός κινείται σε σχέση με τα κίνητρα των φυσικών γονέων και των «εντολέων», τους κινδύνους στην κοινωνική πορεία της ζωής του παιδιού (π.χ. περιπτώσεις άγαμων μητέρων ή ομοφυλόφιλων ζευγαριών), το δικαίωμα της παρένθετης μητέρας στην άμβλωση κ.ά. Όσον αφορά τα θεολογικά ζητήματα, αυτά σχετίζονται με την υποκατάσταση του φυσικού από το τεχνητό, τη διάσπαση της οικογενειακής συνοχής, την τύχη των περιττών εμβρύων και γενικότερα την ίδια την φύση του εμβρύου ως φορέα ζωής.