The Object and System of Medical Criminal Law
The issues of criminal liability of health workers for physically harming a patient during medical treatment were studied by many researchers of the pre-revolutionary, Soviet and post-Soviet periods. In the current century these issues turned into a large-scale research problem giving rise to an enormous number of research publications, monographs and dissertations. The idea of making pharmaceutical criminal law a sub-branch of Russian criminal law has gained momentum and become subject of some research. However, this idea seems to be too narrow at present. The separation of pharmacology from medicine has historically taken a long time, it was connected with pragmatic considerations and had, to a great extent, an artificial character. In this connection, it is possible to use clauses of Art. 41 of the RF Constitution to raise the question of singling out an autonomous group of norms within Russian criminal legislation that together would form a sub-branch of medical (in the wide sense) criminal law. The object of crimes included in this sub-branch can be determined as the constitutional right of citizens to the protection of life and health and to qualified medical help and medical services. Their objective side is characterized by a gross violation of norms and prohibitions set in law and other normative legal acts that should be strictly observed by health professionals in the workplace. The basis of Russian medical law is Part 4 of Art. 122, Art. 124 and 238.1, its supplementary elements are Parts 2 of Art. 109 and 118, as well as Art. 235, 235.1, 238, 230.1 and 230.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Within the framework of the current Criminal Code of the Russian Federation the norms that form medical criminal law are singled out only theoretically. However, in the new edition of the Criminal Code, that should and will inevitably be prepared, these norms should form an independent structural unit as it has been done, for example, in the Criminal Codes of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and the People’s Republic of China.