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Conflicts between Chinese Traditional Ethics and Bioethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2009

Zhaohua Wu
Zhaohua Wu
Affiliation:
Medical Ethics and Philosophy at Hubei College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in China and an exchange scholar at the National Institutes of Health, Washington, DC
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Extract

Philosophy, including moral philosophy, is the distillation of the spirit of an era. As society and science develop, sooner or later a given philosophy will gradually change form so that the resulting metamorphosis will better meet the needs of the society at that time. Traditional Chinese ethical thought is an outcome of the Chinese closed natural economy and ancient low-level science and is suitable for traditional Chinese medicine. Its superstable structure and character, which have evolved over more than 2,000 years, are rooted deeply in the minds of the Chinese people; hence, it is difficult for them to accept new bioethical views and to adapt to the developments of modern medicine and the changes in society. In China, owing to the strongly rooted values of the old tradition, the consequences of modern medicine have produced an alienating phenomenon that deviates from the goals of modern medicine and leads to conflicts between ethics and science, between old medical ethics and new medical ethics.

Type
Special Section: Cross-cultural Perspectives in Healthcare Ethics
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , Summer 1994 , pp. 367 - 371
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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