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Liras and Arenas International Archives of Medicine 2010, 3:10 http://www.intarchmed.com/content/3/1/10

DEBATE ARTICLE
Debate article

Open Access

Bioethics in biomedicine in the context of a global higher education area
Antonio Liras* and Alicia Arenas

Abstract The University is tasked with drawing together, transmitting and maintaining knowledge, while creating an area where the ethical "sense" required for working in the field of Biology and Biomedicine can be provided. Although scientific knowledge is present on an overwhelming scale in nature and, therefore, its discovery is unceasing, this does not mean that, as a human being, the researcher has no limitations. It is Bioethics that sets this limit. The successful spreading of knowledge, therefore, which is proclaimed with the creation of a Global Higher Education Area, should also pursue the establishment of the bioethical principles necessary for the credibility of science and its progress so that the society that it promotes and sustains becomes a reality. International and Global Bioethics: State of the Art In 1998, Baker [1] proffered an alternative rationale for international bioethics based on the fact that international bioethics can be reconstructed as a negotiated moral order that respects culturally and individually defined areas. The theory of a negotiated moral order is flexible to absorb the genuine insights of multiculturalism. This theory is consistent with several controversies such as the controversy over changing the consent rule for experiments in medicine and the controversy over exempting certain clinical trials. Individual human rights in the field of health care have been implemented by most international organisations, including the European Union and the World Health Organisation. The Council of Europe is, however, particularly prominent in its work in the field of human rights, thanks to the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, which strengthens on an