Potter and American biothics

The word “bioethics” come to Japan in 1974 when V.R. Potter’s book, Bioethics, was translated into Japanese. However, this word was no very popular until the late 1980s. In the 1980s, we had a severe debate on brain death and transplantation. Many people talked about the definition of human death and the meaning of life during this period. American-style bioethics was introduced in the late 1980s, and the Japanese Association for Bioethics was established in 1988. At that time, I was a graduate student majoring in philosophy. I read many bioethics papers, and translated some of them. My first impression was that it didn’t seem to fit into my way of thinking about life. Many people around me were saying that they didn’t agree with the idea that “autonomy” and “rights” must be the basis of bioethics. I was frustrated by the fact that American bioethics did not discuss environmental issues and nursing because I believed that these were also important subjects related to our attitudes towards life.

I published my first book, An Introduction to the Study of Life: Beyond Bioethics, in Japanese. In 1988. This was the first academic book that thoroughly criticized bioethics and environmental ethics. I insisted that contemporary medical issues and environmental issues should be discussed simultaneously in the same field because our attitude towards the environment must have some close connections to our attitude towards our own bodies and minds. I criticized the personhood argument and the narrow-mindedness of American bioethics.

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Cross-cultural Approaches to the Philosophy of Life in the Contemporary World
(2004)
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