Worldwide view of National Bioethics Commissions

Abstract

Bioethics has reached a level of great importance over recent years, as ethics applied consequent to reflections, preoccupations and efforts that have dominated science and techniques directed towards human life and health. The importance of bioethics and its development worldwide have been established, and bioethics is present on national governments’ agendas through National Bioethics Commissions or Committees. These have a multidisciplinary nature and their members, with a diversity of professional training, belong to a very wide variety of fields of human knowledge. Because of the differences and specific features of these commissions, this study had the aims of gathering official information on these commissions that is available on the Internet, and comparing the content of the documents that regulate them. We investigated 208 countries; of these, 41 countries make data on their commissions available on official websites. Most developed and developing countries have national committees and their characteristics are similar in many respects.