Legal problems of the turnover of genetic information in judicial practice: medical and research spheres

Abstract

The subject of this study is the analysis of mainly foreign judicial practice on the turnover of genetic information in the fields of medicine and scientific research. The research methods are general scientific methods: analysis, synthesis, comparison and private scientific methods: comparative legal and formal legal. The author refers to the positions of the courts on private issues, including the duties of the attending physician and third parties to inform about the risks of genetic diseases of the patient's relatives, the rights of relatives to access genetic information after the patient's death, obtaining voluntary informed consent to participate in research, compares the approaches of the courts in the presence of similar cases in the practice of other regions of the country and foreign countries. В The novelty of the study lies in the choice of the subject of the study and the conclusions obtained. The author analyzes foreign judicial practice on the issue of the turnover of genetic information in the medical and research fields, which has not been the subject of a separate study in the domestic literature until now. The author draws conclusions about the absence of uniform positions of the courts on the issues of understanding the content of genetic information, the limits of the right of relatives to receive genetic information of the patient. The courts agree (or the cases are isolated in practice) that participation in genetic research should be preceded by voluntary informed consent, which can be presumed and applies exclusively to the research provided for in it. Participants have no rights to research results, and open genes cannot be patented by researchers.