he end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twentyfirst century has begun the rapid development of scientific researches in the biological and medical fields. This process is associated with using of fundamentally new methods, which are primarily aimed at the disease prevention, as well as the introduction into the treatment of human diseases with the latest scientific and innovative technologies, methods and techniques of their application. These opportunities in the development of scientific technologies in the field of biology and medicine have led to the emergence of such a direction of scientific activity as "biotechnology". The proposed article notes that using of biomedical technologies has caused a number of new problems in the field of law and ethics. Legal arrangement in the field of the health protection have become much more complicated. Thanks to new opportunities, today these relations regulate rights and responsibilities of a fairly large number of people. Modern relations in the field of medical services and medical care lead to the emergence of new approaches to their regulation by both legal and ethical norms. In the past, relations in the field of the health protection were usually between two subjects, a doctor and a healthcare consumer. Nowadays, in a medical practice, relations in the field of the health protection involve: a health-care consumer, his family members (e.g., in the case of hereditary diseases diagnosis, blood and organ donation etc.) and third parties (e.g., organ donation, reproductive cell donation, surrogacy etc.). In the general doctrinal concept, biotechnology is the industrial use of living organisms or their parts (microorganisms, fungi, algae, plant and animal cells, cellular organs, enzymes etc.) for product producing or modifying, improving plants and animals, and in medical practice - in relation of the individual human organs (or body as a whole) functioning. These circumstances require improving the legal regulation of modern medicine public relations, bringing them into line with emerging realities. Moreover, the specifics of relations in this field determines the specifics of their legal regulation. The application of new medical technologiesin relation to human treatment has given rise to a significant number of moral and ethical problems that could not be solved within the framework of medical ethics and deontology alone. In connection with this, the way out of the current situation could be the consolidation of bioethics as an interdisciplinary field of knowledge, as a science, which makes it possible to explain moral, ethical and legal aspects of the medicine. This, for example, determines the allocation of medical law in an independent branch of law in some Western countries and Ukraine. The article focuses on biomedical ethics, which is a component of the medical activities system regulation. In the context of considering the levels of social regulation of medical activities, bioethics (biomedical ethics) is an interdisciplinary science that studies moral and ethical, social and legal problems of medical activities in the context of human rights protection. Bioethics should create a set of moral principles, norms and rules that are binding on all mankind and delineate the limits of scientific interference in the nature of the human body, the transition through which is unacceptable.
Editorial: Enabling Biomaterials for New Biomedical Technologies and Clinical Therapies