Criminal Law in Protection of Bioethics, Against The Negligent Outbreak of COVID-19

Criminal Law in Protection of Bioethics, Against The Negligent Outbreak of COVID-19
Mahdi Khaghani Esfahani,^1,* Samira Hajisadeghi ,²
1. Assistant Professor of Criminal Law and Criminology, Center for Research and Development in Humanities (SAMT)
Introduction: The spread of the Coronavirus worldwide has transformed all areas of human life and even led to the evolution of theories and approaches in the humanities, including bioethics and legal sciences. Civil law, labor law, criminal law, human rights, and many other fields of law have evolved from the COVID-Pandemic. One of the legal norms governing human relations is the legal response to damage to health and loss of life and legal prevention of these behaviors. Pervasive crises with inhuman causes are becoming more prevalent with human carelessness. One of the legal norms governing human relations is the legal response to damage to health and loss of life and legal prevention of these behaviors. Pervasive crises with inhuman causes are becoming more prevalent with human carelessness. Violation of the right to life and human health, as the most fundamental human right, is analyzed in the knowledge of bioethics, and among the legal sciences, criminal law has the greatest interest in protecting these two rights. Criminalization, trial, punishment, and criminal prevention are ways in which criminal law protects bioethics in the face of neglect of life as a moral and human value.
Methods: This article analyzes the patterns of legal and criminal protection of bioethics in a descriptive-analytical manner - which is common in humanities research, especially in law. In particular, the method of "discourse analysis" of the shortcomings of Iran's criminal law, and especially the provisions of the Islamic Penal Code on murder due to indifference and negligence to the moral value of life and health of others - in determining whether the negligence in adhering to health protocols that leads to more spread of Corona-virus is criminal or not.
Results: In the prevalence of pandemics, especially COVID-19, Iranian criminal law lacks the necessary classifications to accurately determine the title of responsibility - and consequently the application of crimes and the exercise of appropriate criminal responsibility - in pandemic crimes; and this shows the immorality of Iranian law regarding the punishment of murder due to the culpable transmission of a the deadly virus. Iran's criminal law needs to be amended and new legislation to adequately cover the system of criminalization. Most of these crimes include: misdiagnosis of the disease (if it affects the patient's deterioration), production and distribution of defective diagnostic and therapeutic equipment and prescriptions, failure to provide information at various levels depending on the job, and crimes due to Violation of quarantine regulations.
Conclusion: Iran's criminal law needs to be amended and new legislation to provide adequate coverage of the criminal prosecution system following the spread of epidemics.
Keywords: Bioethics, criminal law and ethics, unintentional transmission of the virus