The Future of Bioethics

Akira Akabayashi presents the first book to explore the conversation on bioethics that is taking place between scholars and practitioners from the East and West: the first book in the discipline of bioethics for the globalized world of the future. An international team of experts address emerging issues in bioethics, focus on new developments and their potential for change, and set the agenda for the future. Most studies in bioethics advocating East-West dialogue have either attempted cross-cultural comparisons or have proposed Eastern philosophical paradigms to counter Western ideas. The tacit premise of previous work on the East-West dialogue is therefore a strain of relativism. Simply maintaining a respectful distance from other cultures is no longer sufficient in this era of globalization. The time has come for active engagement among different cultural perspectives. The Future of Bioethics initiates discussion on bioethical issues that arise from new medical technologies such as regenerative medicine, enhancement, research ethics, and synthetic biology, and goes on to address challenging dilemmas that result from the globalization of social change, such as transplantation tourism, public health ethics, care in the aging society, and professionalism. The volume presents original work by leading researchers in the field, alongside that of promising new scholars; as such, it establishes not only a cross-cultural dialogue, but dialogue between researchers of different generations. The book is divided into two parts–the first on the progress of biomedical technologies and ethics, and the second on globalization and bioethics. Each part contains four sections on different topics, which feature a lead essay followed by a set of commentaries and further discussion.