Global Bioethics: What for? 20th anniversary of UNESCO’s Bioethics Programme

In the early 1990s in different parts of the world, the most extraordinary scientific discoveries were made with regard to the human genome, opening up endless prospects for potential intervention during a person’s lifetime and even in the design of that life. In the background, rear up the old phantoms of eugenics and the unchaining of Prometheus (Martin, González, Poamé). As Federico Mayor notes in the article he wrote for this book, from the beginning of time humankind has pondered on the conflict between what is feasible and what is admissible, and between the right or wrong use of knowledge, because ‘although knowledge is always positive,
its application may not be’. With lucid, responsible foresight, the Director-General of UNESCO established the International Bioethics Committee (IBC) to deal precisely with that which may be admissible in the use of knowledge with regard to life, for all humanity