Perspectives of International and European Law on Dignity and Self-Determination at the End of Life Human Dignity: From Cornerstone in International Human Rights Law to Cornerstone in International Biolaw?

Abstract

European States share a substantially uniform position as to the exact definition of the notion of death, which is considered as brain death. The purpose of this present work is to examine the role that human dignity, in its bio-ethical and bio-juridical implications, can play between self-determination and end-of-life care. Although the concept of human dignity is increasingly invoked in the bioethical debate and, indeed, in international instruments concerning biotechnology and biomedicine, some commentators consider appeals to human dignity to be little more than rhetoric. The brief analysis in this chapter shows that the notion of dignity used - implicitly or explicitly - in international instruments corresponds to the universally based concept of inherent dignity. If human dignity is the same for all human beings, they have equal basic rights even, with reference to the subject of this work, in relation to the End of life. Keywords:End of life; European; Human Dignity; rhetoric