Background Causes for Criminal Liability for Bioprinting

Abstract

Bioprinting is one of the newest scientific developments in the NBICS convergence (convergence of nano-, bio-, information and cognitive technologies), which is a global phenomenon on a global scale. Research in the field of 3D tissue and organ printing is of a complex interdisciplinary nature, and is projected onto the biomedical landscape of organ transplantation issues. The paper deals with the legal issues of bioprinting as a technology in the field of biomedicine amid innovative activities in the healthcare system. The stages of bioprinting (preprocessing, processing, postprocessing) successively pass into each other, forming a trace complex of unresolved legal issues. There is a new phenomenon of objective reality, expressed in actions aimed at creating a new biogenetic product, while no norm of the current positive legislation can describe the process of creating and applying a reprint organ (biomaterial). The need to develop and systematize Russian legislation on the use of the results of innovative technologies in healthcare is justified taking into account the high criminal risk of harm to the human embryo. The paper identifies two groups of criminogenic threats depending on the use of biosafety and bioinsecure technologies in the field of bioprinting. The current criminal legislation makes it possible to classify criminal acts in the field of 3D technologies using the general bodies of crimes in the Special part of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. However, the mechanisms of criminal legal protection need to be improved by developing special norms that block harm to biogenetic human rights. Since the common element in all crimes related to bioprinting technologies is the object of the crime, it is necessary to determine that the moment when criminal legal protection of human life begins is from the moment of fertilization of an egg by artificial or natural means. It is important to use the general term «human embryo», which includes all stages of embryonic and fetal development.