The Connection Between Medical Self-determination and the System of Adult Guardianship——The Institutional Construction of Medical Proxy

China has established the basic rules of informed consent in the medical field through Articles 1219 and 1220 of the tort liability part of the Civil Code of China to address the legality of medical conduct.Since patients’capacity to consent is the prerequisite,when the patient is a fully competent person,it is sufficient to give consent based on valid notification by the doctor.However,for those who are unable to give valid consent,especially adult patients with impaired capacity,resolving the legality of the doctor’s medical conduct remains an issue when it infringes on the patient’s body and health.To solve this issue,someone must give consent in place of the patient when the adult is unable to give valid consent.However,the personal and exclusive nature of the right to medical consent,which is informed consent,makes it impossible to simply delegate it to a guardian or other person to exercise it on behalf of the patient.In this paper,we borrow the concept of“medical proxy”proposed by Japanese scholar Teruaki Tayama,and for the first time,we discuss the construction of medical proxy from the perspective of adult guardianship by connecting the two systems from the standpoint of interpretive theory.