Contemporary bioethical dilemmas and genetic engineering: three-parent embryos and GMO babies

Abstract

Life in the 21st century brings new legal, but also bioethical and moral dilemmas in the spheres of social life, which, in addition to questions from the fields of law and medicine, are closely related to questions from the fields of religion, philosophy, psychology and sociology. Therefore, an attempt to take a broader view of current events and give an answer to current dilemmas and doubts regarding topics that deal with the ab (use) of various medical treatments that concern the life of a person, his health, offspring, but also death, represents a great challenge for all lovers of multidisciplinary research, but also the obligation to us, as lawyers, speak in the name of science and trace the path to future legal solutions. The seriousness of this obligation and duty must not be underestimated, since the issues of surrogacy, in vitro fertilization and the child's right to know his origin (especially in a situation where the donor is unknown), organ donation and euthanasia, are issues that directly and directly affect the beginning, that is, the extension and end of human life, and when we talk about medically assisted reproductive technologies, and the future of the unborn child, which may very well be conditioned (biologically, emotionally, psychologically) by the circumstances under which it was born. When we talk about medically assisted reproduction, the speed of development of science in this area has opened, one might say, a Pandora's box of legal and bioethical issues. While a large number of feminists emphasize the significant and dominant influence of the patriarchal environment and culture on the formation and decision-making of a woman to expose herself to numerous risky, and not quite harmless, medical treatments for the purpose of realizing the maternal role, thus becoming more fully accepted by the social community where still today without offspring woman is not valued in the same way, most questions remain without answers and without wider social consensus, which is contributed to by the absence of knowledge and information, and therefore without a critical attitude, not only among the wider population, but also in the scientific and professional community itself. Where are the boundaries between rights and the legalization of something that isn’t right, and is the conformity of a norm with morality and ethics necessary for the norm to be purposeful and in the service of the common good, or is law today, more clearly than ever before, only an instrument and a means for legalization every wish and whim of man and various interest groups, is a legal, but also a philosophical and theological question, to which the answer must be given. This is especially so if we consider the issue of three-parent embryos - combining the genetic material of three people for the purpose of obtaining a genetically healthy child, which is a legal procedure in some countries today. Do human dignity and the assumption of man as a subject of law exclude the possibility of legalizing experimentation, manipulation, exploitation and human destruction (physical, spiritual, emotional, financial), or are biotechnological procedures aimed at improving man, his characteristics and the overall quality of life, supreme the good and the achievement of the modern era, which as such justifies the reduction of a human being to an object of law?