Biolaw: Origins, Doctrine and Juridical Applications on the Biosciences

This book configures a consistent epistemology of biolaw that distinguishes itself from bioethics and from a mere set of international instruments on the regulation of biomedical practices. Such orthodox intellection has prevented biolaw from being understood as a new branch of law with legally binding force, which has certainly dwindled its epistemological density. Hence, this is a revolutionary book as it seeks to deconstruct the history of biolaw and its oblique epistemologies, which means not accepting perennial axioms, and not seeing paradigms where only anachronism and anomaly still exist. It is a book aimed at validity, but also at solidity because the truth of biolaw has never been told before. In that sense, it is also a revealing text. The book shapes biolaw as an independent and compelling branch of law, with a legally binding scope, which boosts the effectiveness of new deliberative models for legal sciences, as well as it utterly reinforces hermeneutical and epistemological approaches, in tune with the complexity of disturbing legal scenarios created by biomedical sciences’ latest applications. This work adeptly addresses the origins of the European biolaw and its connections with American bioethics. It also analyses different biolaw’s epistemologies historically developed both in Europe and in the United States, to finally offer a new conception of biolaw as a new branch of law, by exploring its theoretical and practical atmospheres to avoid muddle and uncertainty when applied in biomedical settings. This book is suitable for academics and students of biolaw, law, bioethics, and biomedical research, as well as for professionals in higher education institutions, courts, the biomedical industry, and pharmacological companies.

Erick Valdés is a scholar with over 20 years of experience in teaching and researching at Higher Education Institutions in Latin America, Europe and the United States. Has also worked advising directors of Higher Education Institutions in Latin America by developing and designing strategies to optimize curricula and academic outcomes. Has written and published (as author and coauthor) several books in English and Spanish on biolaw, bioethics, globalization and distributive justice issues. Has also published over 70 articles on international journals of biolaw, bioethics, philosophy and social sciences in English and Spanish, and has lectured and talked at numerous international congresses and symposia in the United States, England, Spain, France, Holland, Denmark, Ireland, Russia, Japan, Turkey, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. Has served as visiting professor at several international universities, such as Princeton University and The London School of Economics and Political Sciences, among others. He is the editor and co-author of Biolaw and Policy in the Twenty-First Century: Building Answers for New Questions, published by Springer in 2019.