International Law Aspects of the Protection of Human Rights during Biomedical Research

Abstract

The protection of biomedical research (medical experimentation) subjects is one of the up-to-date topics. The legal regulation of biomedical research on the international level started its development after the Second World War when several Nazi doctors were accused of illegal experiments on war prisoners and civilians.
The seriousness of the problem made it necessary to establish some international principals and standards of biomedical research realization.
As a result several international conventions and non-binding acts such as recommendations and resolutions on this subject were worked out. These acts stipulate a set of human rights in the field of biomedical research and strict requirements of experiments realization. During any experiment there is a potential risk to violate such fundamental human rights as right to life, to personal integrity, to health, to respect for private life. In the field of biomedicine these rights get a more detailed interpretation. The respect of these rights is the main duty of every physician who is bound to run a research on human subjects under the following basic conditions: absence of any alternative method of research; no serious risk; approval of the research project by a competent authority; free informed consent of a research subject.
Furthermore today the victims of medical infringements have the possibility to resort to the help of an international court though the cases relating to the protection of human rights in the field of biomedical research are not very numerous.
The issue in question still remains one of the most debatable. Many countries are reluctant to compromise during the negotiations on such controversial matters as therapeutic and reproductive cloning, use of stem сells or fetuses in biomedical research. That explains why it is impossible to adopt a universal international treaty on this subject.