Is it necessary to liberalize genetic paternity tests in France?
There is a real ethical problem with genetic paternity research In France. And first of all, a great hypocrisy: such test can be carried out on national territory only by court decision (at risk of being illegally for the subject and the analysis laboratory). However, many peripheral states (mainly Belgium, Holland and Spain) carry out this test in a liberal and commercial way: thus, it is possible to divert the law and send by mail a sample that will be analyzed abroad.
Why not authorize such paternity research in France outside any legal control? What is the risk? Cannot this liberalization be decided in the name of equal opportunities in access to information (intimate in this case): currently, only the richest have access to it, creating a double injustice (judicial and economic).
This liberalization finds its place in the current modification of the meaning of the family: to the traditional or rather historical family (in the Roman sense, then the Code Napoleon: those who live together under the same roof), the all-powerful reign of science (and, in the present case, molecular biology) is creating a new meaning for the family: to share the same genetic heritage. We are right here in the "biopower" of Michel Foucault, which radically changes the way we are responsible for access to information that is specific to us and that connects us to others, beginning with our close parents... supposedly and up to now proof of the contrary!
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