REGULATION OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IN PRACTICE OF EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Abstract

In the format of a scientific article, aspects of the content and development of the practice of the European Court of Human Rights, ECHR, regarding scientific activity were analyzed; at the same time, a comparison of the existing decisions of the ECtHR regarding relevant human rights and the evaluation given by the ECtHR to the convention sources in this dimension was carried out; the relationship of the European Convention on Human Rights and of the others Council of Europe’s treaty acts was outlined in the relevant discourse. In the format of the relevant analytics, the role of the ECtHR Decision of September 15, 2021 regarding the Request of the Bioethics Steering Committee is emphasized, in which the ECtHR refused to provide clarification on the treatment of a mental disorder without the consent of the person concerned and for the purpose of protecting others from serious harm and stated that it is within its competence in terms of the Oviedo Convention of 1997, referred exclusively to legal issues related to the interpretation of this Convention, and not to policy issues and issues that go beyond the simple interpretation of the text and tend to supplement, improve or correct its content. The role of a separate Report of the Research Division of the ECtHR on Bioethics and the case-law of the ECtHR, 2012 was noted, which emphasized the competence of the ECtHR to cover the protection of a person, his human rights and, in particular, human dignity, in the context of the development of biomedical sciences and where, among other things, potential problems were raised, related to scientific progress in the storage of human embryos. The article provides a comprehensive analysis of relevant decisions of the ECtHR, such as “Costa and Pavan v. Italy”, “Evans v. the United-Kingdom”, “Francois Mandil v. France”, “Klocek v. Poland”, “Korotyuk v. Ukraine”, “N. v. the United Kingdom”, “Safarov v. Azerbaijan”, “S.H. and Others v. Austria”, etc. These decisions of the ECtHR form appropriate standards for the correlation of freedom of scientific research, national interests of states and human rights, criteria for the acceptability of scientific research, mechanisms for their ethical assessment, ways of handling research information. The article proves, that although the ECtHR actually abandoned the role of the body of interpretation of the Oviedo Convention of 1997, at the same time the ECHR actively applies the Oviedo Convention as a source of law in cases, concerning the right to privacy and the right to freedom of speech; it concerns the attitude of individuals towards biological and genetic technologies, genetic expertise and in vitro pregnancy. In addition, the article emphasizes that the ECtHR examines the scientific basis of the availability of medical care in specific countries in terms of the right to life. A separate block of cases is the ECHR’s protection of the results of scientific research against unfair reproduction and dissemination; in this context, such results are protected by the ECtHR as objects of property rights. The author states that the analysis of the ECtHR decision system in this context shows that in the future they can be transformed in terms of additional guarantees for scientific activity; this should become the subject of additional scientific research.