Nagornaya Irina - Postgraduate student, Department of Criminal Law, Law Faculty,National Research University Higher School of Economics. E-mail: i_nagorn@mail.ru
Address: National Research University — Higher School of Economics, 20, Myasnitskaya str., Moscow, 101000, Russian Federation.

The article concerns theoretical and practical problems of the crimes against health and life committed in the course of rendering medical services. The author makes a conclusion that the characteristics of crimes committed in this area require preliminary examination of medical services and activity which are distinguished and studied in this article. The article studies the problems of the application of recommendations of the general part of RF Criminal code as to crimes against life and health committed in medicine including article 42  Implementation of order or instruction, concerning deeds committed due to negligence. The analysis is made on causal relations between a deed and its criminal consequences, difference between a deed and failure to act. Some crimes are studied  inter alia  infliction of death by negligence due to improper performance of professional duties, failure to assist sick person, illegal performance of abortion. Having examined court rulings, the author reveals some bottlenecks of legal regulation and challenges of legal practice related to them. The focus is made on separating objective  corpus delicti  subject to art. 109 of the RF Criminal Code Infliction of Death by Negligence  and art.  118 inflicting serious harm to health due to negligence and failure to assist sick person . The analysis also covers the obligation of a medical employee to render assistance to a sick person. The analysis includes illegal abortion subject to legal norms and termination of pregnancy by a person without higher medical education with the necessary specialization.