[Legal measures of medical standards]

German law requires "due diligence" of the physician. The courts refer to the state of medical science that is available to a physician who makes every reasonable effort to obtain it. The relevant qualification is to be the skill of an "average" physician. The standard contains normative and factual elements: "good medical practice". The question, however, arises, who establishes the standards for the fields of surgery. The law refers to medical science but lays down minimum requirements. The prevailing standard does not prevent new techniques from being tested, but when they become the standard, cannot be determined in general.