| Research Abstract |
What is the fundamental value of Informed Consent? ---It is the problem of the relation between Informed Consent and Self-determination. In the French medical law, the Principle of integrity of the body (Principes de l'integrite du corps humaine) comes to the front as the public policy (ordre public) and dominate the Self-determination. Informed Consent is indispensable and essential, but not enough : Medical Treatment profits is superior to the Informed Consent (differently from the American and English Law).
The public order (ordre public) collides with desire of the individual who wants to change his body. This is a fundamental problem on the medical law. The concept of illness has a risk of becoming variable and exceeding "Necessity for medical treatment (necessite therapeutique)", when a psychological element which may lead to "desire sufficiency medical treatment"(e.g. cosmetic surgery, transsexualism) enters there. Corresponding to an individual intention, corresponding to development of science and medicine, the standard of "Necessity for medical treatment" becomes still more fluid.
In France, the experiment has been traditionally bisected to the experiment with the medical treatment purpose, and the experiment without the medical treatment purpose. There was an important meaning in this from the viewpoint of a patient's rights. However, the Huriet Act of 1988 justified the latter type of experiment by the Informed consent principle. This is a legal revolution. A patient or a subject of experiment consents to what does not become their profits, that is, to falling victim: -- This "consent principle" to which the Huriet Act has given such a new meaning has superseded the traditional rule of "the profits of medical treatment" for protecting oneself.
Besides, The Principle of integrity physical extends to the body of a dead person in addition to the body of living person, after Dr. Milhaud case in which he experimented on the brain death patient.
|
