In France, the 2021 Act regarding sexual offences recognized incest as an autonomous offence. Previously, the French Penal Code traditionally prohibited incest as an aggravating circumstance based upon minority or the family relationship between the perpetrator and the victim. The problem was that, according to the strict construction principle, the judges had to determine the sexual offence, in turn supporting the aggravating circumstance of incest. To do so, they had to look for the evidence of the lack of consent determined by “violence, constraint, threaten or surprise”. The 2021 Act is the conclusion of several controversial reforms considering this issue.

Conducting experiments on humans may subject them to abuse and exploitation. The international community has developed principles, rules and norms that provide for safeguards against exploitative human experimentation. Recruiting a person by illegal means for illicit purposes has been criminalized as human trafficking. This article attempts, for the first time, to address human experimentation as a form of human trafficking. The article advocates for an expansive definition of the concept of human trafficking to include not only sex or labor but also medical or scientific tests that are conducted in violation of the law, also arguing that the international medical ethical principles, rules and norms may be more appropriately analyzed by using the three basic elements of a case of human trafficking, namely: (a) absence of consent; (b) abuse of a position of vulnerability; and (c) exploitation.