Medical Law
Year:2011 | Volume:5 | Issue:17|Papers Count:7

This paper has been written aiming at the exploration of the dominant approach of the Iranian criminal policy to medical offences in different legislative, judicial and executive respects. Some resulted findings and outcomes indicate that: firstly; the approach of Iranian legislative criminal policy to cope with medical offences is a punishment-centered, punitive approach without a corrective and preventive attitude. Secondly; the Iranian legislative policy has required obtaining consent, clearance, and justification of practice and observance of scientific and technical standards for the removal of the physician's responsibility. Thirdly; the basis of the criminal responsibility of physicians is not clear in the laws of Iran and while there is a contradiction between regulations, the attitude of the criminal legislator maintains expanding the scope of physicians' responsibility. Fourthly; the dominance of the risk theory and the performance obligation in the legislative criminal policy and the prevalence of the fault-based responsibility and best efforts obligation in the judicial criminal policy are obvious. Fifthly; judicial and executive criminal policy of Iran indicates the traits of leniency, tolerance, kindness and neutralization of the goals embedded in the legislative criminal policy. Sixthly, the expansion and the prevalence of the flexible and neutralizing attitude in coping with medical offences are considered as an important attribute of the judicial criminal policy.

A longstanding philosophical and legal issue is how to deal with criminals and persons who in some ways act against the acceptable laws, rules, norms and values in any society. Criminal copings and imposing punishments on those who violate the principles and rules of any society and maintaining criminal responsibility for the individuals are as old as humanity. Meanwhile, the theories of criminology have had great effect on the developments concerning the criminal responsibility throughout their histories of emergence. Noting the element of will as the foundation of criminal responsibility can be observed in all criminological theories and throughout the history of criminology has faced many fluctuations from the absolutism of will to its negation. The importance of these developments lies within the relative wills of some perpetrators of deviations and crimes such as sexual perversions. Because new scientific achievements have proven that many sexual perverts do not enjoy complete will when doing the deviant behavior and have relative wills. Without any doubt, the achievements of criminological theories such as theory of diminished responsibility have had an outstanding influence on the developments of criminal responsibility and also the criminal responsibility of the sexual perverts would not be deprived of these achievements.

Human Enhancement Technology (HET) is among the most recent developments in genetics, which includes the enhancement of human physical and spiritual capabilities to areas far beyond the limits of disease treatment and even beyond the boundaries of complete health. In spite of hopes, there are still considerable concerns about the change of human identity, the collapse of the life concept, the emergence of racism and the dominance of eugenic thought, the destruction of human biologic varieties, the increase of class gaps, the industrialization and McDonaldiziation of human beings’ random natural creation, the breach of equality in enjoyment of human rights and the extension of discrimination against the disabled people who are deprived of access to this technology. Among the consequences of the aforementioned technology are the possibility of an increase in the criminal potentiality and a loss of penitence feeling in an enhanced person after committing a crime. Therefore, it is necessary to draft a distinct legal regime to react criminally to those offenders whose knowledge and intention would be entitled “a diminished/minimal criminal responsibility” due to the incomplete implementation of HET technology. This paper aims to describe how incomplete implementation of HET would unwillingly enhance the criminal potentiality and the dangerousness of human beings, and is to explain how necessary is the minimalization of the criminal responsibility of victims of HET implementation, through an assessment of the degree of moral obscenity of their criminal behavior.

The right to privacy is one of the most important rights that have a strong link with the moral rules and human dignity. Its aim is the elevation of the human personality and honoring his material and spiritual integrity. The origin of this right is the human rights standards; it is necessarily existent for all persons in any situation and conditions and has been protected by law. Criminal protection of patients’ privacy is of an increasing importance due to their specific physical and mental states in the process of treatment. Thus the privacy of patients is divided into different kinds among which, the bodily, mental, physical and informational privacies may be mentioned. In this paper, it has been tried to explain each of them and to examine the criminal support enforced by the legislator on this right.

Therapeutic abortion is referred to the end of pregnancy, before the fetus could maintain living outside the mother’s body in order to protect the mother's health, or due to disease or fetal deficiencies. The researches about the abortion show that there is a direct relation between the legality of the abortion and the low death rate of women caused by criminal miscarriages, but with the ratification of the Therapeutic Abortion Act and the issuance of permission in maternal and fetal diseases that would bother the mother, a basic development occurred in the area of therapeutic abortion.Notwithstanding, many cases of unwanted pregnancies have been ignored for various reasons in the current Act and this reveals the necessity for the examination of different dimensions of the issue.As there have been different practices in respect of therapeutic abortion in different countries, now it is the time that our legislature place many women victimized by the sexual crimes under its legal, hygienic and social protection.

Human Rights are among the most important moral rights. Within the area of medical care, part of the patient’s rights rests on the shoulders of different curative staffs and the main task of the personnel is to present care services to the patients. The recognition and the observance of the patients’ rights by the nurses enjoy a particular importance for the promotion of the quality of cares and the increase of the patients’ trust and consent. For this purpose, being aware of these rights is necessary for the nursing students. This research aims to determine the extent of the awareness of the nursing students in BS and MS courses with regard to the observance of the help-seekers’ rights in legal dimensions (right to respect, right to accept or refuse treatment, right of confidentiality, help-seekers’ rights in human research, right to access information and right to receive health services) and to compare the awareness of two groups with each other.