European Information Network - Ethics in Medicine and Biotechnology

Predictive Genetic Diagnosis

--- Overview Italy ----

- Ethical discussion -

There is no country specific discussion.

- Legislation -

(Author: Staff from Inter-University Chair in Law and the Human Genome, Spain)

In Italy, the field of Predictive Genetic Diagnosis and of medically assisted fertilization is characterized by a persistent and widespread abscence of legislation. In recent years the debate has involved legal doctrine, and this has produced important contributions, in some cases trasposed from foreign experiences, but in several cases the result of an original elaboration. In recent years, a vast range of interventions, suggestions, proposals have been formulated in Italy, developing into bills and drafts law proposals on medically assited reproduction. But none of these bills has ever been passed. It is a fact that Italy nowadays has become a country emblematic for its lack of laws. Thus Italy finds herself in the unique condition of being a country where there is a free market in the field of bioethics, where there are no laws on the conservation of frozen embryos, no laws on homologous or heterolous fertilization, no laws on predictive genetic diagnosis, no rules disciplining embryo experimentation, etc.

List of legal instruments:

• Procreazione assistita, le nuove regole (Ddl Camera) 26 May 1999. (Project to regulate Human Assisted Reproduction)
  

Links

(Collected by: Staff from Inter-University Chair in Law and the Human Genome, Spain)

Ethics
There are no ethical links.

Legislation
There are no legal links.

Further

• Opinions of the National Bioethics Committee, updated in 2000.