Cross-Cultural Perspectives on the (Im)Possibility of Global Bioethics (Philosophy and Medicine, 71)

The contributions to this volume grew out of papers presented at an international conference Individual, Community & Society: Bioethics in the Third Millennium, held in Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, between 25-28 May 1999. The conference was organized by the Centre for Comparative Public Management and Social Policy, and Ethics in Contemporary China Research Group, in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the City University of Hong Kong. The conference brought together scholars from east and west to investigate the challenges to caring and to traditional moral authorities that would confront bioethics in the third millennium. They explored the implications of moral loss and moral diversity in post-traditional and post-modern societies, and how these would shape the character of medical care and bioethics discourse in the new era. A proceedings volume under the same title of Individual, Community & Society: Bioethics in the Third Millennium, was published in May 1999 for the conference meeting. Front Matter....Pages i-ix Global Bioethics, Global Dialogue: Introduction....Pages 1-18 Morality, Universality, and Particularity: Rethinking the Role of Community in the Foundations of Bioethics....Pages 19-38 Front Matter....Pages 39-39 Is Just Caring Possible? Challenge to Bioethics in the New Century....Pages 41-58 Living and Dying in a Post-Traditional World....Pages 59-67 Front Matter....Pages 69-69 The Tension between Biomedical Technology and Confucian Values....Pages 71-88 On Relational Paradigm in Bioethics....Pages 89-104 The Ethics of Prenatal Screening and the Search for Global Bioethics....Pages 105-130 Genetic Engineering and Social Justice: Towards a Global Bioethics?....Pages 131-147 Global Biomedicine, Human Dignity, and the Moral Justification of Political Power....Pages 149-177 The Reappraisal of the Foundations of Bioethics: A Confucian Perspective....Pages 179-193 Front Matter....Pages 195-195 Self-Ownership and Its Implications for Bioethics....Pages 197-208 Health Inequalities and Justice....Pages 209-221 Managing Medical Information: The Moral Dilemmas in Postmodern Societies....Pages 223-235 Stabilizing or Changing Identity? The Ethical Problem of Sex Reassignment Surgery as a Conflict among the Individual, Community, and Society....Pages 237-263 Homosexuality and the Use of Reproductive Technology....Pages 265-276 The Domain of Parental Discretion in Treatment of Neonates: Beyond the Impasse between a Sanctity-of-Life and Quality-of-Life Ethic....Pages 277-298 Ethics and Narrative in Evidence-Based Medicine....Pages 299-315 Front Matter....Pages 317-317 Local Bioethical Discourse: Implications for Understanding Disease....Pages 319-334 Bioethics and Philosophy of Bioethics: A New Orientation....Pages 335-357 A New Possibility of Global Bioethics as an Intercultural Social Tuning Technology....Pages 359-367 Front Matter....Pages 317-317 Moral Theories vs. Moral Perspectives: The Need for a New Strategy for Bioethical Exploration....Pages 369-390 Back Matter....Pages 391-404

This collection of papers explores one of the central debates in the field of bioethics in the new century. It evaluates the controversy between the claim that there is a common morality accepted by all and the opposing view that there are different moral visions and moral rationalities, within which complex bioethical issues demand a solution.
Contributions within this volume offer different approaches and perspectives on the pursuit of global ethics in the new century. They are organized under five major themes.