Concepts of human vulnerability and individual integrity in bioethics

Abstract

This article consists of a literature review of the meanings and concepts of vulnerability and integrity contained in the most significant international documents on bioethics, and aims to describe the categories most commonly used to classify vulnerabilities. Technological advances and the increase in clinical research studies in the 20th century have given rise to new forms of vulnerability, and have emphasized the vulnerabilities caused by social, political and environmental determinants, or in other words, social vulnerability. The intervention bioethics can be used by peripheral countries to address the problem of social exclusion through the use of prudence, prevention, precaution and protection. Latin American bioethics have been important for the expansion and politicization of moral conflicts in health care, allowing the construction of a global bioethics, in which vulnerability can be tackled by adding different perspectives to solve common problems.