FORMATION OF MEDICAL LAW BIOETHICS AS A UNIFORM COMPLEX SCIENCE IN THE REPUBLIC OF AZERBAIJAN

V.H. Mamedov
Doctor of Medical Sciences; 
Professor at Forensic Medicine Department of the Baku State University; Chairman, Azerbaijan Bureau of the UNESCO Department on Bioethics; Deputy Chairman, National Committee on Bioethics of UNESCO of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences, Baku
vumammadov@yahoo.com

V.Y. Mamedova
dissertator, Institute of Law and Human Rights, Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences
Vafa_mammadova12@mail.ru

The processes of globalization along with the new tendencies in the development of humanity, which have appeared in the recent decades, create new challenges for global science. The rapid introduction of new technologies, the achievements of scientific and technological progress, issues of business and commerce in the health care system, biology, and genetics have led to the emergence of a new scientific discipline that studies the range of ethical and legal issues related to the provision and protection of fundamental human rights for life and health. It is called bioethics. Being a new complex science, bioethics covers the field of interdisciplinary research at the intersection of scientific research in biomedical sciences, medical practice (clinical and experimental medicine), and human values, examines the subject of protection and ensuring human rights for life and health in modern conditions, along with the maximum provision of human rights in the health care system.
Substantial changes have taken place in the world health system since the second half of the 20th century, namely, a significant expansion of the field of medical and biological knowledge, which allows novadays to conduct research, diagnostics, treatment and prevention at the genetic level, to carry out organ and tissue transplantation, to introduce into human reproduction issues and in terminal states in intensive care. Only a hundred years ago it was impossible to predict the emergency of the named issues, on the one hand. On the other hand, new players, such as the state, pharmaceutical companies, health insurance organizations, medical device manufacturers, private clinic owners, and others; are being actively introduced to the traditionally established "doctor-patient" relationship in the management and prevention of morbidity and mortality. Finally, the development of the global human rights movement in the post-war years, toheter with the adoption of the 1948General Declaration of Human Rights, and the subsequent numerous international legal instruments for the protection and enforcement of human rights in general and patient rights in particular, and the provisions on the priority of human rights introduction in national constitutions and statutes, led to an increase in people's self-awareness, raising their awareness and legal literacy.
The rapidly changing nature of modern medicine and public health challenges the public to consider and solve emerging bioethical problems and dilemmas. These changes have become serious prerequisites for the emergence and development of such new scientific disciplines as bioethics and medical law. They first appeared in Europe and the United States, at the intersection of medicine, biology, law, ethics, sociology, philosophy and theology, as the necessity to study and regulate the ethical and legal aspects of human activity in medicine, to study and regulate new legal relationships in the system health has emerged.
Although the majority of researchers in the world consider V. R. Potter to be the ancestor of bioethics, it is difficult to determine the exact date of the emergence of bioethics as a science. Researchers believe that the impetus for its emergency was the Nuremberg trial, where the world community became aware of the shocking actions of Nazi doctors during the war. It reasoned into questioning the conscientiousness of the medical profession for the first time in the history of mankind on such large scale. The 10 principles of the Nuremberg Code, adopted on the basis of the verdict of the military tribunal in Nuremberg in 1947, can be considered the first international legal and ethical document designed to protect the honor and dignity of a person in experimental medicine.
The challenges and threats concentrated in the scientific progress required the international community to take immediate actions. Years of the middle and second half of the 20th century were marked by a comprehensive interest of science and the public to ethical and moral problems caused by unprecedented technical medical rearmament and progress in biotechnology. International organizations begin to develop legal concepts in the field of medicine. The rapid development of basic medical and biological sciences, which set entirely new ethical challenges, which require moral and legal resolution, to the humanity; and the growth of "social sensitivity" in relation to the achievements of modern science, including medicine, which, in turn, sharply poses the task of legal control and regulation both at the stage of the experiment and practical implementation; are the main reasons for the emergence of bioethics and medical law that have emerged today as new scientific disciplines.
Bioethics had been formed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a branch of nterdisciplinary research, which has become a social institution for the protection of human rights in the health care system, in the fields of medicine, biology and new technologies. Modern bioethics includes medical law, covering the whole range of issues that constitute the subject of the latter; and it has all the features of an established and rapidly developing scientific discipline.
The history of bioethics development in Azerbaijan can be divided into three periods: before the formation of the USSR, the Soviet period, and the period of independence. Azerbaijani scientists, philosophers, thinkers have expressed adherence to the original culture and traditions of the people, including in the sphere of moral, ethical and ethical values; in different periods of formation and development of national statehood. Historically, the foundations of Azerbaijani medical ethics were laid in ancient times. 
In view of the state paternalistic health system prevalence, ethical principles in medicine during the Soviet period developed in a direction, beneficial to the totalitarian regime: in the course of predominant position of medicians and civil servants, and the dependent position of patients. Nevertheless, along with the mentioned, there were many other important provisions, such as determining the role of the doctor in protecting and improving people's health, preventing diseases, which underscores the preventive focus of Soviet health care. Paying tribute to the world human rights movement, graduates of medical schools had began to take the Oath of the Soviet Union Doctor, which, nevertheless, was politicized, because the future doctor swore not in obligations to the patient and the professional community, but to the state, which made him or her dependent on communist morality and ideology. In Soviet Azerbaijan, violations of human rights in the health care system were considered in the courts only in the context of criminal investigations, in view of the punitive nature of justice and the law enforcement system. Modern scientific approaches, in their turn, were often rejected by Soviet science. Nevertheless, even during the period of Soviet health care functioning, Azerbaijani scientists paid much attention to the importance of ethical approaches in medicine.
The acquisition of independence by the Republic of Azerbaijan contributed to the strengthening of the integration of domestic health care with the world's leading health-protecting and ensuring the rights to life and health of people systems, with international activities on patients' rights protection. Universal bioethical principles, adherence to universal democratic values and standards in the field of ensuring fundamental human rights for life, health, inviolability and human dignity reflected national Constitution. National legislation on health has also been actively developing in independent Azerbaijan.
The issues of education and science, play important role in the development of bioethics in Azerbaijan. The named issues should contribute to the formation of new ethical regulators of the behavior of employees in the sphere of health care; provide help in understanding of the moral problems faced the latter along with biologists, doctors and other specialists. Next to the legislative regulation of biomedical research and practice of health care in such areas as transplantology, determination of the moment of death, limits of treatment for terminally ill patients, etc., there should be the issues of education and development of science in the field of bioethics and medical law at medical universities and law faculties. The creation of ethical committees and commissions in research and medical institutions shall play important role in the development of bioethics. The introduction of courses in bioethics and medical law in medical schools of all levels is of great importance for the formation of the medical community ethical self-awareness. Large-scale studies of Azerbaijani scientists in the field of euthanasia, transplantology, reproductive technologies, nanotechnology, etc. appear at the beginning of the 21st century.
Another wave of developments in bioethics and medical law in the country has begun with the establishment in 2010 of the Azerbaijan Bureau of UNESCO Departments on Bioethics International Network. Attorneys have joined this field, and, as a result, the Department of Bioethics and Medical Law has been created in the Scientific Research Institute of Human Rights of ANAS, doctoral and dissertations studies in the specialty "Bioethics and Medical Law"have been established.