ILLEGAL CONDUCTING OF MEDICAL AND BIOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTS ON HUMANS: A PERSPECTIVE ON THE PROBLEM OF A VICTIM

Abstract

The article examines the content of the concept of “victim” in the criminal offense of “illegal conducting of experiments on humans”, provided by Art. 142 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. In particular, the author focused attention on one of the forms of committing this unlawful act – illegal medical and biological experimentation. It is argued that the main corpus delicti, provided by Part 1 of Art. 142 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, are characterized by the general victim (any human), and the qualified corpus delicti (Part 2 of Art. 142) are characterized by the special victim, who is a minor (child). Given the increasing degree of public danger of unlawful encroachment depending on the decreasing age of the victim, the author raises the issue of expediency of criminal law protection of life and health of an unborn child. The author states that today the current Ukrainian legislation and case law associate the moment of the right to life with live birth, and therefore, any medical and biological experiments on human embryos and fetuses, including genetic manipulations, are not covered by the criminal offense, provided by Art. 142 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The current state of experimentation with the human genome at the prenatal stage of development together with the arising in this connection ethical problems and biological threats are highlighted. The regulatory position of the European legislator and the views of national researchers on the need for legal protection of the rights and dignity of children at the prenatal stage of development are presented. The author proposes to move the criminal law definition of the moment when human life begins to an earlier period, in particular, to add the qualified corpus delicti “illegal conducting of experiments on humans” (Part 2 of Art. 142 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine) with such type of the special victim as “unborn child (fetus)”.