The “Oviedo Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine” (1997/1999) and the UNESCO “Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights”(2005)

The year 1997 proved very significant for the realization of the importance of the relatively fresh term “bioethics”, adopted by Van Ransellaer Potter in 1970 —though used for the first time in an environmental sense by Fritz Jahr in 1926. It was during 1997 that “the member States of the Council of Europe… conscious of the accelerating   developments in biology and medicine” and of the danger that “misuse of biology and medicine may lead to acts endangering human dignity”, affirmed that “progress in biology and medicine should be used for the benefit of present and future generations”, and proceeded towards the well-known “Oviedo Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine” which entered into force two years later. In    the same year the General Conference of UNESCO circulated the “Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights”