Fight against both the Establishment and ourselves

The problem of “inner eugenic thought” has not been solved because all of us share it inside us and we cannot escape completely even if we wish to. However, it is worse to take our “inner eugenic thought” for granted, and never try to change our attitude. Hence, they thought what is needed was a fight both against the Establishment and against our own inner eugenic thought. The basic characteristic of their bioethics was “fighting.” In this sense, their thoughts and actions were a little different from “bioethics” we are familiar with today, that is, bioethics as a rule-making process by physicians, politicians, and ethicists, or bioethics as a series of analytical discussions for professional scholars. Their thoughts and actions are closer to “life studies” that I have advocated for years. Actually, I have studied much from their thoughts, and the idea of life studies has developed through this research. Strictly speaking, their thoughts and actions may be called “life studies” rather than “bioethics,” if the latter should mean some academic analyses and a process of rule-making by ethicists. I had a debate over this topic with some researchers, and the conclusion was that it depends on how we define the concept of “bioethics.”

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Disability Movement and Inner Eugenic Thought
(2002)
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