The legal position in bioethical problems of life and death

Abstract

The law nowhere defines either life or death and leaves questions relating to these matters to be decided by the judge or the jury as questions of fact after hearing the relevant opinion of the medical experts. Traditionally life was considered to commence at conception after the union of man and woman, and was thought to end on the moment that the vasco-respiratory system stops functioning. Today methods of artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, and the possibility of preserving sperm and ova over a long period have rather complicated the matter. The traditional moral concepts relating to abortion have also tended to break down in a majority of countries. On the other hand the possibility of reviving patients after a vasco-respiratory failure and the possibility of keeping in a state of apparent life the bodies of persons who, on the basis of brain-stem death, are considered to be dead, have raised problems as to the exact computation of the time of death.