MEDICINE AND LAW最新文献

Health law is a rapidly developing law specialty in China. This article examines the current overall framework and evolution of Chinese health law, as a background to an analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of this legal regime. Research suggests that: 1) The independent status of Chinese health law as jurisprudence and a specialty ought to be assured altogether; 2) The convergence between health law and other laws should be strengthened; 3) The current Chinese health law framework ought to be completed. This suggests the necessity to find ways to improve the independence of health law in China by eliminating the convergence and completing the legal framework.

In early 2012, many embryos were destroyed in a Roman hospital because of the breakdown of the freezing machine. In such cases the biological damage, for instance by ovarian hyperstimulation, and the pecuniary damage, i.e. the costs of treatments, can be compensated if the plaintiff demonstrates that subsequent fertility treatments would not have been performed if the embryos had not been destroyed. The damage for pain and suffering can be compensated regardless of what would have been the outcome of the implant. Indeed, even in the case where the implant of cryopreserved embryos would not have been successful, the loss of embryos is suitable to cause pain and suffering because it violates the right to become a parent. Nevertheless, the proof of such damage is difficult to achieve. In order to impede that the negligent loss of embryos would remain without consequences it seems to be possible and appropriate to provide a crime to punish those who cause the death of embryos by negligence.

The paper explores the backward and forward linkage between HCL and bioethics. Indeed, the relationship between the two is so close that it can be considered one of symbiosis. This is particularly the case when an account is taken of how HCL and bioethics positively benefitted from each other in diverse ways during their development into their present status as discrete disciplines. In the first place, the aftermath of the Second World War, such as the Nuremberg trial and unprecedented medical experiment scandals in the 1960s/70s fuelled the increasing participation of lay scholars in exploring and critiquing medical ethics which culminated in the emergence ofbioethics.2 This in turn facilitated the evolution of HCL as a discipline, since academic lawyers involved in early bioethical discourse developed interest in exploring the interface between law and bioethics at the same time that society was waking up to the ethical implications of medical advances. As HCL emerged as a discrete discipline, it consolidated the status of bioethics as a field of inquiry by projecting the relevance of the latter in adjudication of novel cases with significant slippery moral undertones. Thus, the chicken and egg paradox finds a perfect reflection in the emergence of health care law and bioethics in England and Wales.

The surgical insertion of permanent heart rhythm (resynchronization) devices within individuals who have chronic cardiac deficiencies is widespread and increasing. It is predictable that some individuals who have had a permanent heart rhythm device implanted will subsequently reach a point, physically and/or emotionally, at which they (or their surrogates) indicate the desire that their own resynchronization be removed or deactivated. Despite continuing controversy, a professional international consensus has begun to emerge over the past few years, concerning the fundamental legal and ethical principles that ought to guide clinical practice regarding the deactivation of cardiac implantable electrical devices (CIEDs). The central legal and ethical principles of the emerging professional consensus in this sphere are briefly summarized in this article, along with some thoughts about the challenges of translating those principles into clinical practice for specific patients.

Law and medicine are separate professions, and attorneys and physicians often see their professions in conflict. There are, however, more similarities than differences between the two professions. And there are areas of mutual concern and overlap that demand the application of both legal and medical knowledge for the good of the society. In the new categorical system of values, which is substantially influenced by the so-called modern or aggressive medicine, clever physicians, researchers, and technicians discover newer and better ways to do things. Often, what science and technology make possible soon becomes permissible and, eventually, normal and expected. Given the rapid advances in technology and medical technology in particular, it is clear that without the reasonable restraints imposed by philosophical but also, legal critique, medicine and its practitioners may unintentionally convert science and medical method into a muddled philosophy of human life'. Against this background, this paper will handle the questions posed by the extent and protection of human rights and freedoms in terms of application of new biomedical techniques and technologies of treatment toward the development of International human rights law. It also discusses the compatibility of domestic medical law with the normative system of international human rights.

Although the health care is replete with technology in the present day, it is not freely accessible in a developing country. The situation could be even more compromised in the case of people living with HIV/AIDS, with the added dimension of stigma and discrimination. What are the factors that act as barriers to health care? This study was conducted to look into perceptions of people living with HIV/AIDS with regard to access to health care. The study looked into accessibility of general health vis-à-vis access to antiretroviral therapy. Demographic variables like age, gender, income were studied in relation to factors such as counseling, confidentiality, stigma and discrimination, which are known to influence access to health care. People living with HIV/AIDS perceive general health care as more accessible than care for HIV treatment. Discrimination by health care workers causes a barrier to accessibility.

I will problematize medical performances at the end of life, confronting them with the responses of Portuguese Criminal Law. By starting from a review of literature, both in Portugal and abroad, I will cross the criminal doctrine with a broader, interdisciplinary approach, including the reconsideration of medicine ethical tradition (notably the Hippocratic Writings) and the present developments in neurosciences. The frame of homeostasis (neurobiology of emotions) by Damisio, with compassion in the top, helps to clarify to which extent medical act according to legesart is becomes the centre of the problem. Indeed, it is within the medical act, understood as the meeting of two autonomies--patient's and doctor's autonomies--that the compassion takes place as a result of the agreement/compromise between the patient's will of ceasing her/his life in a situation of unbearable suffering and the doctor's duty to relieve that suffering. Compassion arises here as a "homeostasis instrument", that is, an emotion which is important in the regulation of life, even when we are speaking about end(ing) of life. This new perspective allows us to guess a shift of paradigm on the ethical and social levels. On the other hand, in so far as we have passed from the compassionate response in medical setting to its discussion, successively, in medical ethics, in the courts, and as a normative instrument, I claim that we are before the "transition from an automatic homeostasis to a deliberate homeostasis" (Damisio). Therefore, 1 seek for a balance between the spontaneous and the planned, concerning the issue of praxis. Indeed, what increasingly happens in medical praxis should be brought together with theory, whereby medical law has a word to say.

There are currently high profile debates about legal and ethical aspects of end of life care and treatment in the U.K. and Brazil. Unlike some other jurisdictions, neither country has legalised assisted dying or euthanasia. We argue that it is timely to consider the issues from the perspectives of an evolving concept in bioethics, that of solidarity.

Society is changing at an unprecedented rate. Several areas of knowledge are evolving on a daily basis, namely medicine and connected sciences. Hence it is needed that the legislator walks at least right behind this evolution, in order not to be considered retrograde. One of the areas that need the constant attention of the legislator is medicine, as far as prolonging life is considered. We have witnessed several cases along the decades of people who are not living a long and healthy life, but rather just a long life, with little quality in it. Therefore, it is also known that issues such as euthanasia have been discussed at several levels. Criminal law, in most countries, namely in Portugal, does not admit any type of euthanasia. We will briefly analyse the two Articles in the Portuguese Penal Code concerning this matter, in order to come to the conclusion of its pertinence and adequacy to today's society.

Advance directives emerge in the doctor-patient relationship as a way to ensure that the autonomy of the patient is observed, prior to a potential state of incapacity. Thus, autonomy can be exercised ensuring patient's dignity and self-determination. Advance directives yet have the power to drive the medical practitioner and his staff so that it is given the treatment and care previously chosen by the patient. The main purpose of this paper is to show the lack of legislation on the matter in Brazil versus the recognition of Advance Directives by the Brazilian Federal Council of Medicine. Can a mere resolution of the Council transform directives into enforceable wishes? This is an answer we intend to offer throughout the text.