Law and Policy on Bioethics and Biotechnology

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Our project group aimed at researching on the meaning of expertise in the fields of bioethics, biotechnology and law. By so doing, we hope to produce new experts in these fields in the future.We have done a number of symposiums and workshops among lawyers, physicians, psychologists, ethicists, bureaucrats, and others both internationally and domestically. Our focus has been upon the current trend toward legalization of medical issues and bioethical issues. We have picked up a variety of issues such as terminal care, assisted reproduction, patients' autonomy, health information privacy, and patient safety to discuss between lawyers and other experts in non-law fields. At one time we set up a workshop at Melbourne University Law School, where Australian, American and Japanese experts got together to discuss medical research on human subjects. This series of interdisciplinary discussion made it clear that other non-law experts are dissatisfied with legal approach and thinking about the me … More dical ethics issues. On the other hand, many of them make excessive expectations from law and lawyers who could hopefully give them a clear rule to easily apply. In sum, lawyers are doing too much in one way and too little in the other from their point of view. There is a clear gap between what the law could do and what the law actually does.It means that we need a new academic field to fill the gap. To establish a new discipline, our efforts revealed, we should take into consideration the following three. First, non-lawyers mistakenly think that the core of law is criminal law. Second, for them, law is always a tool for sanctions. The law is to be avoided if possible. It is true that one of the major functions of law is to give sanctions and penalties, but lawyers could think more broadly of law. Law could be a tool for supporting medical ethics and respecting the medical profession in their daily practices. Third, although communication between lawyers and non-lawyers has been difficult, still it is found out to be feasible. The large part of communication gap was due to the lack of it, not to its impossibility. To establish a new medico-legal discipline, the efforts to make a network like ours will be useful and indispensable.In the biotechnology area, the series of discussion revealed likewise the insufficiency of law and legal approach, and also the importance of academic ethics in patent application field. Less