Responsibility of Medical Team towards Human Embryo Cloning

Human cloning is one of the latest issues in genetic engineering whose application for human being، due to emergence of new thoughts، has caused a big arena of conflict and disagreement. The only rules about the physician’s responsibility for the implementation of human cloning technology are paragraph (3) of Act 158 of the Islamic Penal Code adopted in 1392، the civil law، and the law of civil liability. Through reviewing these it can be concluded that unlike therapeutic cloning، reproductive human cloning is not considered a legal act due to the Jurists’s votes on the uncertainty of technical security and in some cases probable loss of the infant and the mother، and the patient’s consent does not remove the physician’s liability. Since for the physician’s liability the three elements - medical error، the existence harmful act، and the relationship between these two – are needed and all three are present in human cloning، the physician has both civil and criminal liability. Moreover، since genes play an important part in emergence of physical traits and mental diseases، it seems that at the moment toward wrong cloning which leads to behavioral and brain disorder and consequently committing crime by the person created by this process، we can only answer most of the questions related to this subject by legal regime of “vicarious criminal responsibility” due to act of other person. Additionally، the team of physicians should be liable for incomplete implementation of the technology which results in the birth a retarded child.