Konsens ohne Begründung?

Abstract

To anyone who is not a positivist with respect to the law existing bioethical regulations must appear unsatisfactory; for the basic values cited to ground them are neither well defined nor adequately justified. Are they not merely the ones currently held by a majority of people in the Western industrialised nations? Might they not be subject to change either over time or in other cultural contexts? If human rights serve only to preserve people's rationally exercised individual freedom then restrictions like those of the German Embryo Protection Act cannot be adequately justified. Tue best chance for a consensus seems to result from the common experience of events intuitively judged as inhuman. lt appears therefore realistic to predict that legal, political and moral norms with respect to the life sciences are only consensually constituted if a society has had a bad experience in that field.