[The need for a law concerning human body rights]

This new "turn of the century", at least in France, is marked by an increasing discrepancy between laws and new medical discoveries. Medical practitioners, scientists and researchers have had such a fantastic power and, as a consequence, the patients have never run such an important risk of loosing human dimensions. The basic question is the legal status of the human body. Until now, common law considers human being as a citizen whose liberty should be limited under certain conditions. However, this point of view poorly prepares to rule man as a creature of flesh and sentiment. There is an almost complete deficit of the legal statute of man in his globality, especially concerning the juridical status of the human body which is totally lacking as a whole in the french civil code. Human body represents a double legal problem: is its integrity a private or a public privilege? Are his dignity and identity really warranted for everyone?