new law regarding medical responsibility in the United Arab Emirates

In the United Arab Emirates, medical responsibility was formerly defined and governed by the provisions of Law 7 of 1975 for the practice of medical professions; this had been a part of civil law. The passing of Law 10 of 2008, namely the Law on Medical Responsibility in the UAE ", which was enacted on the 16th of December 2008, created a new framework to deal with this issue. The old master-servant relationship for compensations is replaced by insurance companies, which will pay damages to the plaintiff [patient] injured as a result of a physicians' negligence. This paper provides the first translation of the Arabic text of the new law into English. This is particularly important for expatriate doctors working in UAE; many of whom do not speak Arabic. Where appropriate, a comparison is made between provisions of the old law and new law dealing with similar points. Moreover this paper provides an overview of some contemporary legal and ethical issues in medical practice, i.e. confidentiality, consent, euthanasia, abortion, sterilization, assisted reproduction technology and cloning of humans. Legal and ethical restrictions have been presented and discussed for the benefit of physicians in order to increase their awareness of these matters

Stem cells: social, jurisprudential and legal approaches

Stem cells are regarded as a colossal development in the m edicine and the deutero-ranked foremost cataclysm in the medical world after the human genomes which are mused over as one of the chief challenges of the genetic engineering field. Such perusals have instigated some quandaries in the religious, moral and legal subject matters. Such Stem cells are the constituents of the therapeutic cloning and they have been detested by some yet sought after by others. There is a dichotomy on the two extremities of this continuum both in miscellaneous religions jurisprudence and that of Islam. There are some sects who denigrate the utilization of this technology regarding it as the human zygote wrecking which violates humans' dignity. They are opposed to the prevalence of this cast of astonishing aceological methodology whereas others regard it as a headway contributing to a better apprehension of latent worldwide rituals documented upon the latitudinarianism. They regard this sort of acquiescence based upon the tenets. They believe any anti-latitudinarian has to be substantiated. Lex is one of the chief moot points in the human quandaries and numerous queries have been expounded on account of the correlation of lex and socio-religious fields. The major argumentative point accentuated upon by the proponents of the aforementioned views is the compatibility of the foregone technology with the conventional system, bona fide ethics, legal support of human's personality and the pertinent upshots in the simulated cell and the one that is several days old, human's relationship with his or her own organs, the displacement of the above organs by the pertinent owners, taking advantage of them, and a whole lot of other predicaments which have been delved into in this article in order to deal with some of the extant approaches seeking to happen upon solutions for the aforementioned cases

Aspectos médico legales de la clonación humana / Medical-Legal aspects of the human cloning

Las técnicas de reproducción asistida, y entre ellas la clonación humana, suscitan interrogantes éticas. Su empleo promete beneficios para la humanidad y, específicamente para parejas infértiles la satisfacción de ser madres y padres. En este artículo se debaten las regulaciones y las implicaciones jurídicas de dicha actividad, actualizándonos en el acontecer mundial y nacional del tema. Se argumenta que la clonación humana ya es una realidad y como si esta técnica se regula promueve la vida y la dignidad humanas. Además se propone que esta técnica se entiende mejor no en términos moralistas, sino contextuales que responden a situaciones reales de la vida, específicamente una ética de la responsabilidad. Palabras claves: Clonación humana, concepción, fecundación, óvulo, bioética, nasciturus, genoma humano, ADN, responsabilidad.

Medicina hoy: biología molecular y medicina a fines del siglo XX / Medicine today: molecular biology and medicine at the end of the 20th century

Este trabajo revisa conceptos de la biología molecular moderna con la premisa de que su influencia en la medicina de nuestros días es tan grande que ya no puede ser un saber limitado a unos pocos expertos. Se analiza la estructura y organización de los genes humanos, su naturaleza partida en exones e intrones y el flujo de información genética desde el DNA a la proteína. Se describe el papel del control de la transcripción en la regulación de la expresión genética y la diferenciación celular, presentando ejemplos de experimentos que definen la importancia de los genes "maestros". Se describen los conceptos básicos de la ingeniería genética, la generación de animales transgénicos y knock out y las aplicaciones de la biología molecular al diangóstico médico y a la determinación de identidad y lazos biológicos. Finalmente la terapia génica y las realidades y fantasías de eventuales transgénesis o clonado por trasplante nuclear en humanos.