Ana Maria Marcos

Healthcare is constituted by the services provided by healthcare professionals in order to assess, maintain or restore patients’ health status. Spain adopted Directive 2011/24/EU on the application of patients’ rights in cross-border healthcare, of 9 March 2011, so as to ensure patient mobility and to promote cooperation on healthcare between Member States, whilst fully respecting the responsibilities of the Member States for the definition of social security benefits relating to health and for the organisation and delivery of healthcare and medical care and social security benefits, in particular for sickness.

CRISPR gene edition constitutes one of the most promising tools in the area of human health. However, it also involves a number of issues that require further consideration. The concerns, indeed, are twofold: the first are connected with the safety of the technology, while the second relate to some ethical issues and it is precisely those ethical issues that this chapter will deal with. To this purpose, we will focus on four main issues: the necessity of this technology and the risk issues involved; the embryo loss involved; the alteration of the human genome and human identity; and the enhancement/eugenics issue. Some of our main conclusions are the following: (1) We strongly support the idea that if further research reduces the risks involved, then the reasons for the prohibition of gene editing in human beings will vanish; (2) Embryo loss is not a key factor in terms of the ethical discussion of gene editing; (3) a general ban on human embryo editing on the grounds of the defense of the human genome is clearly unjustified, even if we really hold this approach; (4) a general ban on gene editing affecting the embryo’s germ line genetic identity is hard to understand and entails a number of questions that hinder its practical applicability; and (5) referring to eugenics can hardly justify a general ban on the use of gene editing in human embryos, considering the benefits that are at stake and the moral imperative to pursue them.

Este trabajo aborda el pacto librepensador suscri­to por las autoras Rosario de Acuña y Ángeles López de Ayala. Se examinan sus contribuciones en la prensa librepensadora y su activismo feminista a través de un análisis de sus colabora­ciones en Las dominicales del librepensamiento, El gladiador: órgano de la “Sociedad progresiva femenina” y El gladiador del librepensamiento. La ideología de estas publicaciones les permitió vincular la lucha feminista con la agenda política de ideología progresista. Se parte de dos ejes complementarios cuya intersección permite abordar su pacto de compromiso y transgresión: la lucha por la igualdad social y por la igualdad de género. Se estudian sus reflexiones sobre la explotación del pueblo por las castas, el empoderamiento de la mujer como agente constructor del progreso y la denuncia vehemente de su sometimiento. Se concluye que los escritos de Acuña y Ayala evidencian con el paso de los años una radicalización que pro­picia una postura cada vez más trasgresora y un feminismo más combativo, reflejando así su descontento con la actitud pater­nalista u hostil del librepensamiento y el republicanismo mas­culino en lo que respecta a los derechos de la mujer.