Diritto di proprietà vs diritto alla vita? Una nuova questione dinanzi alla Corte europea dei diritti dell’uomo

The recent appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (Application n. 46470/11) originates from the demand to use human embryos for scientific research on the ground that they are “things”. Indeed the appellant claims her right to property of the embryos pleading to the art. 1 of the Additional Protocol n. 1 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The attack is directed against the Italian Law on medically assisted procreation (Law n. 40 of 19 February 2004) which bans any experimentation on human embryo. The Authors argue that the demanded evaluation of the human embryo as a “thing” is scientifically and legally baseless. They also show how the Italian Law n. 40/2004, which recognizes the embryo as a subject holder of rights (art.1), is backed by an important normative complex. In this article the thesis on the inconsistency between Law n. 40/2004 and Law n. 194/178 is rejected and it is claimed the scientific, ethical and legal reasonableness to lead the science to adult stem cells instead embryonic stem cells. The analysis is conducted reviewing numerous dispositions from art. 18 of the Oviedo Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine. In this article a wide space is allowed to the Bioethics case-law of the European Court of Human Rights as for the doctrine of the margin of appreciation which should be applied also to defend Italy in the examined case. The article hope that the Court set great store by what is written in art. 2 (“Primacy of the Human Being”): “The interests and welfare of the human being shall prevail over the sole interest of society or science”.