Biopolitics, biotechnologies, biomedicine, and biolaw as forms of bioregulation

Abstract

Modern science, education, and medicine are increasingly becoming the primary agents of biopolitics. Biomedicine is emerging, and before our eyes, it is becoming a part of the social sphere and, in the long term, a part of the new economic order and one of the state’s main agents of biopolitics. In this regard, attention to ethical and legal issues in biomedicine will only increase in the coming years. The study’s objective was to determine the role and legal nature of biotechnologies, biopolitics, biomedicine, bioethics, and biolaw as forms of bioregulation. The methodological basis of this work was provided by general scientific methods of cognition of legal phenomena, such as synthesis, the method of analogy, formal logic, and others, as well as private, scientific methods of research of biotechnology, biopolitics, biomedicine, bioethics, and biolaw as forms of bioregulation. The issue is considered from the perspective of the concept of four “BIOs”: biotechnology-biosafety-bioeconomics-biopolitics. It is concluded that the role of not only bioethics but also the emerging biolaw in the implementation of biopolitics, i.e., policies aimed at the development of the economy, social sphere, and society, taking into account the new realities formed under the onslaught of modern biological technologies, is significantly increasing. Progress in biology and medicine led to the need to combine scientific and theoretical, and socio-cultural knowledge to solve society’s problems, bioethics began to take shape. The authors propose the accelerated development of biolaw as a supra-sectoral legal formation, allowing from the perspective of a systematic approach to combining the achievements of both established sectoral legal sciences (administrative law, civil law, etc.) and medical law, pharmaceutical law to solve new problems, leveling of biological threats, risks, ensuring biological safety. The development of biolaw cannot be done without the interdisciplinary approach provided by links with bioethics, biology, medicine, economics, public health, healthcare, and others.