Humanity: A subject to claim rights. Human dignity facing the patenting of human genetic information

Abstract

One of the most important implications of the Human Genome Project was the acceleration of the patenting of living organisms as well as of human genetic information in the context of progress in biotechnology and biomedicine. Facing this situation, the international community has not remained indifferent. It provoked the creation of documents such as the Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights issued by UNESCO, the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine drafted by the Council of Europe, and the Gijón Bioethics Declaration created by the International Society of Bioethics. In short, the aim of this paper is to analyze the concept of “human dignity” in relation to “humanity” and the human genome.