Brescia Biolaw Observatory
The Brescia Biolaw Observatory was established within the Department of Law at the University of Brescia and is coordinated by Professor Simona Cacace.
The Biolaw Observatory examines issues concerning the protection of human life, dignity, freedom and health in the light of scientific progress, technological advancement and developments in healthcare practices.
The Observatory adopts an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together a plurality of fields of expertise, bodies of knowledge, professional experience and perspectives.
Its purpose is to offer a range of viewpoints and perspectives from which to examine contemporary reality, acting as a catalyst for dialogue and research on issues of both local and national relevance. To this end, it works in collaboration with scientific societies, associations and public institutions, with a view also to developing initiatives in the fields of education, consultation and social change.
The Brescia Observatory forms part of the National Diritto Gentile Network and joins the observatories already established in Padua, Trento, Bologna and Palermo. It shares their research and operational priorities and, in particular, adopts the same “gentle” approach to law: an approach capable of entering with sensitivity into the care relationship and into the human and professional relationships that arise and intertwine in healthcare settings.
The aim is to reconcile the practical responses that everyday healthcare practice requires the law to provide in addressing contemporary issues with the pluralism of values characterising modern society and with respect for the fundamental principles of the legal system.
In particular, in the light of the interests and expertise developed over time by the members of its Working Group, the Brescia Observatory seeks to investigate and explore the “classical” issues of biolaw arising at the beginning and end of human life. These concern individual autonomy in relation to one’s own body, as well as the recognition and protection of existential choices relating, on the one hand, to reproduction and, on the other, to illness and dying.
This involves identifying the role and content of any legal instruments that may be called upon to regulate areas of fundamental importance to the development of personal identity and the shaping of individual dignity.
These biolaw issues require legal scholars and practitioners to consider the lawfulness of human intervention on other human beings, as well as the continuing validity and usefulness of traditional legal categories. At the same time, they form part of the broader and necessary dialogue between science and law, in the light of the social changes and technological progress of our time.
The work of the Brescia Biolaw Observatory is based, in particular, on two premises.
The first rejects the argument that the availability of a technological or therapeutic means must necessarily entail its use. The mere possibility afforded by technology does not dispense with an assessment from the perspective of bioethics and biolaw. More fundamentally, nor does it relieve healthcare professionals of the need to assess proportionality and clinical appropriateness or to consider the possible application of the controversial precautionary principle.
The second, closely related premise concerns the need to define the boundary between the rights and freedoms deriving from the principle of self-determination and the claim to have every individual desire fulfilled. This is based on the understanding that the task of drawing such a boundary is entrusted primarily to the political choices of the legislature and to the outcomes of any constitutionally consistent interpretation of the applicable legal provisions.
