PubMed1997
Researchers in legal medicine have often been asked to solve legal problems specifically related to medicine. Recently, breakthrough medical techniques such as organ transplantation from brain dead patients or gene therapy have attracted much attention, and their practice requires interaction with society. Since most universities do not have a department of medical ethics, the role of legal medicine for the dialogue between medicine and society is becoming more and more important. This paper seeks to address some specific issues and to review some of my research in an attempt to have an ongoing dialogue with society. It covers the following four points. 1) Two methods for forensic practice established in our laboratory were introduced. One is a simple spectrophotometric determination of carboxyhemoglobin, very accurate even at low concentration. This method is especially useful for the examination of fire victims. Another is a method for the identification of human urinary stains using uric acid/urea nitrogen quotients, and is useful for the diagnosis of asphyxia. 2) Various approaches of DNA analysis for personal identification or paternity testing established in our laboratory were described. They include DNA typing of HLA class II antigens, microsatellites, and minisatellite variant repeat mapping by polymerase chain reaction (MVR-PCR). 3) Various efforts describing the reliability of DNA testing for court cases in Europe and the United States were presented. Methods proving the reliability of the population data for DNA analysis were also described. Unfortunately, research in this field remains insufficient in Japan. 4) The important role of legal medicine from the standpoint of medical ethics in modern medicine is described, and my research related to medical ethics were reviewed.