Foreword by Robert Veatch, Introduction: The Search for a Transcultural Bioethics Part 1: Beyond ... more Foreword by Robert Veatch, Introduction: The Search for a Transcultural Bioethics Part 1: Beyond Stereotypes and Stereotyping 1. Communitarian China vs. Individualistic West: a Popular Myth and its Roots 2. The Fallacy of Dichotomizing Others 3. China as the Radical other of the West, or a Misconstruction of Foucault: Sexual Excess as a Cause of Disease in China and the United States 4. Excursion: 'False Friends' in Cross-Cultural Understanding, or a Misjudgement of Needham: Refuting the Claim that the Ancient Chinese Described the Circulation of the Blood Part 2: Truths of Cultures 5. Taking China's Internal Plurality Seriously 6. The Complexity of Cultural Differences: The Forgotten Chinese Tradition of Medical Truth-Telling 7. The 'Cultural Differences' Arguement and its Misconceptions: The Return of Medical Truth-Telling in China 8. Is Informed Consent Not Applicable in China? Further Intellectual Flaws of the 'Cultural Differences' Arguement Part 3: Cultural Norms Embodying Universal Values 9. Human Rights as a Chinese Value: A Chinese Defence and Critque of the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics 10. Women's Rights in the Chinese Context : Toward a Chinese Feminist Bioethics Part 4: Chinese Wisdom for Today 11. After Cheng (Sincerity or Truthfulness): The Professional Ethics of Traditional Chinese Medicine 12. Medicine as the Heart of Humanity and the Physician as a General 13. Exploring the Core of Humanity: A Chinese-Western Dialogue on Personhood 14: Beyond Individualism and Communitarianism: A Yin-Yang Model on the Ethics of Health Promotion (With Kirk L. Smith) 15. Conclusions: Toward the Uncertain Future 16. Epilogue: Thus Spoke Hai Ruo (The God of the North Sea)
To monopolize the scientific data gained by Japanese physicians and researchers from vivisections... more To monopolize the scientific data gained by Japanese physicians and researchers from vivisections and other barbarous experiments performed on living humans in biological warfare programs such as Unit 731, immediately after the war the United States (US) government secretly granted those involved immunity from war crimes prosecution, withdrew vital information from the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, and publicly denounced otherwise irrefutable evidence from other sources such as the Russian Khabarovsk trial. Acting in "the national interest" and for the security of the US, authorities in the US tramped justice and morality, and engaged in what the English common law tradition clearly defines as "complicity after the fact." To repair this historical injustice, the US government should issue an official apology and offer appropriate compensation for having covered up Japanese medical war crimes for six decades. To help prevent similar acts of aiding principal offender(s) in the future, international declarations or codes of human rights and medical ethics should include a clause banning any kind of complicity in any unethical medicine-whether before or after the fact-by any state or group for whatever reasons.
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, May 27, 2014
The Chinese Communist Party government has been forcefully promoting its jihua shengyu (planned f... more The Chinese Communist Party government has been forcefully promoting its jihua shengyu (planned fertility) program, known as the "one-child policy," for more than three decades. A distinctive authoritarian model of population governance has been developed. A pertinent question to be asked is whether China's one-child policy and the authoritarian model of population governance have a future. The answer must be no; they do not. Although there are many demographic, economic, and social rationales for terminating the one-child policy, the most fundamental reason for opposing its continuation is drawn from ethics. The key ethical rationale offered for the policy is that it promotes the common social good, not only for China and the Chinese people but for the whole human family. The major irony associated with this apparently convincing justification is that, although designed to improve living standards and help relieve poverty and underdevelopment, the one-child policy and the application of the authoritarian model have instead caused massive suffering to Chinese people, especially women, and made them victims of state violence. A lesson from China--one learned at the cost of individual and social suffering on an enormous scale--is that an essential prerequisite for the pursuit of the common good is the creation of adequate constraints on state power.
Sex-selective abortion is the major direct cause of the severe imbalance in the sex ratio at birt... more Sex-selective abortion is the major direct cause of the severe imbalance in the sex ratio at birth - contributing to the phenomenon of over 100 million 'missing' females worldwide and 40 million in China alone. Internationally as well as in China, moral condemnation and legal prohibition constitute the mainstream and official position on sex-selective abortion. This paper characterises the dominant Chinese approach to the issue as state-centred and coercion-oriented. Drawing upon case study material, the paper discusses eight major problems arising from coercive state intervention in sex-selective abortion: neglect of reproductive liberty and reproductive rights; the hidden dangers of state power; inconsistency with existing abortion policies; practical ineffectiveness; underestimating the costs and resistance involved; simplifying and misrepresenting the key issues; the lack of sufficient public discussion; and ignoring the moral and political principles established by traditional Chinese thought. To avoid a solution that is worse than the problem itself, alternative social programmes that are focused on women, community-oriented and voluntary in nature need to be developed.
Foreword by Robert Veatch, Introduction: The Search for a Transcultural Bioethics Part 1: Beyond ... more Foreword by Robert Veatch, Introduction: The Search for a Transcultural Bioethics Part 1: Beyond Stereotypes and Stereotyping 1. Communitarian China vs. Individualistic West: a Popular Myth and its Roots 2. The Fallacy of Dichotomizing Others 3. China as the Radical other of the West, or a Misconstruction of Foucault: Sexual Excess as a Cause of Disease in China and the United States 4. Excursion: 'False Friends' in Cross-Cultural Understanding, or a Misjudgement of Needham: Refuting the Claim that the Ancient Chinese Described the Circulation of the Blood Part 2: Truths of Cultures 5. Taking China's Internal Plurality Seriously 6. The Complexity of Cultural Differences: The Forgotten Chinese Tradition of Medical Truth-Telling 7. The 'Cultural Differences' Arguement and its Misconceptions: The Return of Medical Truth-Telling in China 8. Is Informed Consent Not Applicable in China? Further Intellectual Flaws of the 'Cultural Differences' Arguement Part 3: Cultural Norms Embodying Universal Values 9. Human Rights as a Chinese Value: A Chinese Defence and Critque of the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics 10. Women's Rights in the Chinese Context : Toward a Chinese Feminist Bioethics Part 4: Chinese Wisdom for Today 11. After Cheng (Sincerity or Truthfulness): The Professional Ethics of Traditional Chinese Medicine 12. Medicine as the Heart of Humanity and the Physician as a General 13. Exploring the Core of Humanity: A Chinese-Western Dialogue on Personhood 14: Beyond Individualism and Communitarianism: A Yin-Yang Model on the Ethics of Health Promotion (With Kirk L. Smith) 15. Conclusions: Toward the Uncertain Future 16. Epilogue: Thus Spoke Hai Ruo (The God of the North Sea)
To monopolize the scientific data gained by Japanese physicians and researchers from vivisections... more To monopolize the scientific data gained by Japanese physicians and researchers from vivisections and other barbarous experiments performed on living humans in biological warfare programs such as Unit 731, immediately after the war the United States (US) government secretly granted those involved immunity from war crimes prosecution, withdrew vital information from the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, and publicly denounced otherwise irrefutable evidence from other sources such as the Russian Khabarovsk trial. Acting in "the national interest" and for the security of the US, authorities in the US tramped justice and morality, and engaged in what the English common law tradition clearly defines as "complicity after the fact." To repair this historical injustice, the US government should issue an official apology and offer appropriate compensation for having covered up Japanese medical war crimes for six decades. To help prevent similar acts of aiding principal offender(s) in the future, international declarations or codes of human rights and medical ethics should include a clause banning any kind of complicity in any unethical medicine-whether before or after the fact-by any state or group for whatever reasons.
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, May 27, 2014
The Chinese Communist Party government has been forcefully promoting its jihua shengyu (planned f... more The Chinese Communist Party government has been forcefully promoting its jihua shengyu (planned fertility) program, known as the "one-child policy," for more than three decades. A distinctive authoritarian model of population governance has been developed. A pertinent question to be asked is whether China's one-child policy and the authoritarian model of population governance have a future. The answer must be no; they do not. Although there are many demographic, economic, and social rationales for terminating the one-child policy, the most fundamental reason for opposing its continuation is drawn from ethics. The key ethical rationale offered for the policy is that it promotes the common social good, not only for China and the Chinese people but for the whole human family. The major irony associated with this apparently convincing justification is that, although designed to improve living standards and help relieve poverty and underdevelopment, the one-child policy and the application of the authoritarian model have instead caused massive suffering to Chinese people, especially women, and made them victims of state violence. A lesson from China--one learned at the cost of individual and social suffering on an enormous scale--is that an essential prerequisite for the pursuit of the common good is the creation of adequate constraints on state power.
Sex-selective abortion is the major direct cause of the severe imbalance in the sex ratio at birt... more Sex-selective abortion is the major direct cause of the severe imbalance in the sex ratio at birth - contributing to the phenomenon of over 100 million 'missing' females worldwide and 40 million in China alone. Internationally as well as in China, moral condemnation and legal prohibition constitute the mainstream and official position on sex-selective abortion. This paper characterises the dominant Chinese approach to the issue as state-centred and coercion-oriented. Drawing upon case study material, the paper discusses eight major problems arising from coercive state intervention in sex-selective abortion: neglect of reproductive liberty and reproductive rights; the hidden dangers of state power; inconsistency with existing abortion policies; practical ineffectiveness; underestimating the costs and resistance involved; simplifying and misrepresenting the key issues; the lack of sufficient public discussion; and ignoring the moral and political principles established by traditional Chinese thought. To avoid a solution that is worse than the problem itself, alternative social programmes that are focused on women, community-oriented and voluntary in nature need to be developed.
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