Springer The Family, Medical Decision-Making, and Biotechnology: Critical Reflections on Asian Moral Perspectives: 91 (Philosophy and Medicine, 91)

This book examines the implications of Confucian moral and ontological understandings for medical decision-making, human embryonic stem cell research, and health care financing. The book reveals East Asian attitudes on the moral status of human embryos and the morality of embryonic stem cell research that are quite different from Christian and Muslim cultural perspectives. The book also discusses how Confucian cultural resources can help meet the challenges of health care financing. Review From the reviews: "The most recent achievements of … search for an Asian bioethics as an intellectual endeavour. Very informative and thought-provoking, they are the results of many years’ labour and offer important contributions to bioethics in Asia and the world. … Growing out from two international conferences in Taiwan organised by the editor, it constitutes Volume 91 of the well-established book series ‘Philosophy and Medicine’ … . have significantly contributed in filling up a huge intellectual gap in international as well as Asian bioethics." (Asian Bioethics Review, December, 2008) From the Back Cover East Asian medicine, biomedical research, and health care policy are framed by their own set of moral and cultural commitments. Chief among these is the influence of Confucian ideas. A rich portrayal is offered of the implications of Confucian moral and ontological understandings for medical decision-making, human embryonic stem cell research, and health care financing. What is offered is a multifaceted insight into what distinguishes East Asian bioethical reflections. This volume opens with an exploration of the Confucian recognition of the family as an entity existing in its own right and which is not reducible to its members or their interests. As the essays in this volume show, this recognition of the family supports a notion of family autonomy that contrasts with Western individualistic accounts of proper medical decision-making. There are analyses of basic concepts as well as explorations of their implications for actual medical practice. The conflicts in East Asian countries between traditional Confucian and Western bioethics are explored as well as the tension between the new reproductive technologies and traditional understandings of the family. The studies of East Asian reflections concerning the moral status of human embryos and the morality of human embryo stem cell research disclose a set of concerns quite different from those anchored in Christian and Muslim cultural perspectives. The volume closes with an exploration of how Confucian cultural resources can be drawn upon to meet the contemporary challenges of health care financing.