Scientific moratories in the context of the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights

Abstract

In 1975, the Asilomar Conference inaugurated a form of regulation that has been generally underestimated by jurists: the declaration of a voluntary, temporary and universal scientific moratorium. Since then, these types of statements have occurred, although with uneven results. The main characteristic of these
statements is that scientists make a techno-scientific discovery or innovation whose immediate scope they cannot calibrate, in a context of legal anomie and total and absolute ignorance on the part of society and public powers. Well, we wonder to what extent the law could or should accept this type of statement
in order to make it binding, in accordance with the content of the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights Of UNESCO.