En torno al confín del inicio de la vida humana en el pensamiento bioético de Diego Gracia

Abstract

It is in the limit of the beginning of human life, together with its end, where the great ethical conflicts that are currently taking place in our western societies are especially concentrated. To explain this, we have resorted to Diego Gracia's bioethical thought, as he is the one who best accounts for the difficult task that we set ourselves, since he raises the question from the diversity of perspectives, without rejecting or ignoring any of them. The repercussion of the author inside and outside our borders is enormous, especially in Latin America, becoming one of the key references whose allusion is unavoidable if what is sought is to carry out serious and specialized work in this young discipline that is bioethics. Talking about it without referring to Diego Gracia is practically unthinkable today, at least if what you are trying to do is good bioethics. For the treatment of the limit of the beginning of human life we have divided our research into three clearly differentiated parts. In the first of them, we ask ourselves about the conditions of possibility of human life, focusing our attention on sexuality and reproduction, which have gone from being intimately linked to traveling today on separate paths, having to equip each one of their corresponding ethics. From this fact we elucidate whether it is really possible to think of a sexuality without reproduction, as well as a reproduction without sexuality, always from the context of our pluralistic societies and from the prism of the ethics of responsibility advocated by the author. The second part is reserved for the analysis carried out by the bioethicist of the status of the embryo from three different perspectives, but at the same time complementary. In the first place, we deal with its scientific status, inquiring whether it is possible to determine at what moment human life begins and whether science can contribute something more to the question. Later we wonder about its ontological status. showing how Gracia uses the approaches present in Xavier Zubiri's philosophy to offer an answer to it. Finally, we pay attention to its ethical statute, in which we question whether it is possible to have any kind of duties with the embryo, as well as with other realities that are not human. In the third part of our thesis we apply the knowledge dealt with the first and second part to practice, starting with the topic of eugenics, then moving on to the problems derived from genetic engineering and freedom of research, until we arrive at the main cause of the new wars of religion that both, the pro-life and pro-choice positions, have come to star today: the problem of abortion, as well as that of conscientious objection to it. After these treaties, we apply the method of deliberation to such questions, which has been advocated by the bioethicist during the last decades, in order to offer a solution based on the search for optimal courses of action. Finally, we end our research with some conclusions in accordance with the contents presented in it, also putting in value the thought of an author who has known how to dialogue over the years with the different disciplines, always from a context of responsibility with the present reality.