의료와 생명공학에 대한 의료법학의 성과와 발전

Product and Prospect of Korean Medical Law related with Medical Treatment and Gene-technology

This paper aims at a general survey of the product and prospect of the Korean Medical Law under the Civil Law. The interface between the medical law and civil law is located in the legal approach of the medical treatment and the phenomena of life. The medical law extends speedily to many new fields. Accordingly, the concept of medical law has changed. So far the medical law has been recognized as a field, in which just the liability and penalty is discussed in case of medical accidents. It has touched on the recovery of their personal interests, that is, their bodily and mental interests including their life after they were injured by medical malpractice. Our medical law papers refer, however, now to the law ruling the bio-technology even before damage is caused by it. According to advance of the medical technology and bio-technology, medical practice does not extend to maintenance of human life but also to its beginning and ending. Medical intervention in beginning of human life includes artificial insemination or reproduction, human cloning, prenatal care, abortion and so on. From the beginning of human history, we have witnessed abortion, and then now we faced the new problems caused by the new technology by which we can confirm the abnormality of chromosomal composition. One of the new problems is wrongful life or birth. Argument about artificial insemination or reproduction and human cloning should be precede by the discussion of human life itself. Medical intervention in ending of human life is typically negative euthanasia. It has been debated whether we can suspend a medical treatment of a person with a dead brainstem, that is, a brain-dead person. The debate is on the assumption that the medical treatment of such a person is medically futile. This issue did not need to be discussed until we advanced in the medical technology by which we can enlarge the time between the brain-death and the heart-death. The issues caused by the enlargement need the humane study of human life itself. Another medical intervention in ending of human life is positive euthanasia, by which human life ends earlier than by the natural death. So far the Korean medical law produced many papers discussing the above mentioned issues and their argument commands the very deep analysis and raises the disciplinary study among law, medicine, philosophy, biology and so on. From now on we need to spread the argument into the Korean society and converge the opinion of majority, in order to make law properly.