CYIL vol. 9 (2018)

CYIL 9 ȍ2018Ȏ TWO DECADES OF THE CONVENTION ON BIOMEDICINE: HAS IT BEEN ANY GOOD? generated (or woke up) a social need for a more equal physician-patient relationship, which in turn generated particular legal rules. That is why we called the adoption of the Convention into Czech law a shock in our book on informed consent more than a decade ago. 64 We were right: a shock it was indeed. The typically conservative nature of law was affected by the significant socially progressive influence of the Convention. Providers of health care and health care professionals, with the best of intentions to care for their patients’ health, were suddenly struggling with the unexpected changes in the law. The pressure on the health care system was significant, and even patients had to get used to the new conditions. 65 There are still many aims yet to be accomplished. However, the overall transformation of Czech health care towards the partnership model has already been significant. The consequences of the ratification of the Convention are deep, far-reaching, and positive. The author of this paper, as a lawyer with expertise in medical law as well as a Czech citizen, retrospectively appreciates that the Czech Republic ratified the Convention even when it did not entirely understand what it had agreed to by doing so.

64 ŠUSTEK, Petr, HOLČAPEK, Tomáš. Informovaný souhlas. Teorie a praxe informovaného souhlasu ve zdravotnictví. [Informed Consent: Theory and Practice of the Informed Consent in Healthcare.] ASPI, Praha 2007, pp. 4, 18. 65 See ibid., pp. 18-19.

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