A Cross-Cultural Introduction to Bioethics1

Authorship and Acknowledgments

The chapters in this book have been written by a team of persons including the editor, with other authors from a range of countries and backgrounds. Additional thanks for editing goes to many persons including Mary Ann Chen Ng, Morgan Pollard, and many colleagues and teachers in different countries. Thanks also to Nobuko Macer, Fumi Maekawa, Mihaela Serbulea, Hyunjoo Youn and Catherine van Zeeland for essential help with the ongoing project.

The textbook/resource book compiled here also owes appreciation to those who attended many pilot meetings in different countries, and the working meetings 12-16th February 2004 at the time of the Ninth Tsukuba International Bioethics Roundtable (TRT9) and the Fifth Asian Bioethics Conference (ABC5), which saw the formation of the International Bioethics Education Network. Also to many who gathered for meetings on the project at the First UNESCO Bangkok Bioethics Roundtable, 11-16 September, 2005 in Thailand. The human network is another product of the project, essential for implementation and expansion of bioethics education. The papers and visual aids of those meetings are available on the Eubios Ethics Institute Internet site and Eubios CD.

I also thank the staff and students of schools in many countries, especially in Tamil Nadu India, Ateneo de Manila High School in Manila, The Middle School attached to Beijing Normal University, and University of Tsukuba, Japan, for special enthusiasm in the first years of trials of this project, as well as all other schools and universities in which trials were conducted. Thanks especially to the country and regional coordinators which are Australia (Irina Pollard), China (Jinhua Fu and Jing Zhao), India (Jayapaul Azariah, M. Jothi Rajan, Arokiam Thaddeus), Japan (Darryl Macer), Malaysia (Maude Phipps), Mexico (Marcela Rodriguez), New Zealand (Lindsey Conner, Darryl Macer), the Philippines (MaryAnn Chen Ng, Ester Abito, Milarosa Librea), South Korea (Ivo Kwon), Taiwan (Dena Hsin), Thailand (Darryl Macer). Their enthusiasm has also inspired the project to expand to more countries.

I also thank the essential financial support of Sasakawa Peace Foundation for the project 2003-2005, and the staff including program officer Tetsuya Ishizuka help in developing the project. For the follow-up of the project I thank the support of UNESCO Bangkok and the Division of Ethics and Science and Technology, UNESCO, which is mapping and developing methods for teaching ethics.We welcome more authors, contributors and partners to this project. The teachers guide, movie guide, updates, translated versions, and other files are placed on the Internet site to download as files for all to share and improve.

Darryl Macer

Authors’ Profiles

Darryl R.J. Macer, Ph.D., New Zealand

Darryl is Regional Advisor on Social and Human Sciences in Asia and the Pacific, in RUSHSAP, UNESCO Bangkok, Thailand, and Affiliated Professor in Bioethics at United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies since 2002. He is also Director, Eubios Ethics Institute, Japan, New Zealand and Thailand. He taught bioethics at the University of Tsukuba, Japan from 1990-2005, and in many countries. He has aB.Sc (Hons) in Biochemistry from Lincoln College, University of Canterbury, 1983; Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, and Trinity College, University of Cambridge, U.K., 1987. /
/ Morgan Pollard, Australia.

Morgan is a postgraduate student in the environmental sciences, currently working on a PhD project on the modelling of sustainable development through Southern Cross University’s School of Environmental Science and Management in Lismore, New South Wales, Australia. He has completed a BSc double major in ecology and environmental geography at the University of Sydney, with an Honours thesis in marine biology. He has travelled widely in lesser developed countries, and these travels and studies have led him to his current interests in fostering a sustainable world.

Minakshi Bhardwaj, Ph.D., U.K./India


Mina has training in biology and bioethics, and specialises in ethics and international governance and regulation of biotechnology, including biomedicine and use of genetic technologies. At ESRC Centre for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics (CESAGen), Lancaster University, UK ( she is responsible for a flagship project on Genetic Databases and also partner in three other international projects including, LEMLife coordinated by Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, and PropEur coordinated by University of Birmingham, UK. She is editorial board member of EJAIB and referee’s for Electronic Journal of Biotechnology ( EJB) and Journal of Human Mutation ( HuMu). She did her PhD in Biological Sciences/bioethics from University of Tsukuba, Japan as a Monbu-ka-gakusho scholar and also worked as a volunteer researcher for UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) for a few months. She has published several papers in both science and social science journals. /
/ Susannah Tye, Australia

Susannah is a postgraduate student in the Department of Biological Sciences at MacquarieUniversity, Sydney, Australia. Her research investigates the effects of stress hormones on neurotransmission in the mesolimbic dopamine system, an important pathway in the brain involved in drug addiction, and assesses the role of stress hormones in drug addiction and relapse. This work seeks to provide insights into the biological and behavioural links between lifestyle stresses and drug addiction. Susannah is also involved in a Sydney wide survey of youth health awareness investigating the health-related educational needs of Sydney’s high school students for the development of useful teaching resources. She enjoys teaching at both MacquarieUniversity and local Sydney high schools.
Irina Pollard, Ph.D. , Australia

Irina is a biologist, Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at MacquarieUniversity, Sydney, Australia. She is co-founder of the new ethical discourse ‘bioscience ethics’ and her friendship portal at provides free entry to educational material in disciplines connected to stress physiology, reproduction, developmental toxicology and the environment. Access to other sites carrying items of interest to bioscience-bioethics is also available. Her major research/teaching impacts are in lifestyle stresses and their transgenerational effects. These studies have led to a deep concern for social justice and to the publication of two comprehensive, interdisciplinary texts in the area of human reproduction and bioscience ethics. Pollard enjoys life, work, travel and a good anecdote. /
/ Dena Hsin-Chen Hsin, Ph.D., Taiwan

Dena is a lecturer at the nursing department, ChinaMedicalUniversity in Taichung, Taiwan. She got her PhD in Bioethics at the University of Tsukuba, Japan. Her MSN from the University of Dubuque in USA and has taught nursing for more than ten years. She also has experience of working in the cancer center of Taipei as oncology nurse specialist for four years. She initiated the curriculum of Nursing Ethics in her department eight years ago and had been invited to be editor and writer of medical ethics textbook projects sponsored by the Ministry of Education Taiwan.
Lindsey Conner, Ph.D., New Zealand

Lindsey isPrincipal Lecturer, Research Coordinator School of Secondary Teacher Education, Christchurch College of Education, New Zealand. Her PhD in Education from MonashUniversity in Australia was in bioethics education. She works in Teacher Education, Teaching and learning methods, Biology Education, Science Education, Issues Education, Reflective Learning, Assessment Development and Evaluation. She has taught in university and schools. /
/ Alireza Bagheri, M.D., Ph.D., Iran

Ali is a medical doctor from Iran. Ali received his Ph.D. on medical ethics from the University of Tsukuba, Japan.His past three years work has focused on ethical and legal issues in brain death and organ transplantation. In his most recent contribution he examined a cross-cultural comparative study on organ transplantation laws especially in Asian countries. Ali is currently working on Medical Futility at the KyotoUniversity in Japan.
/ Michael Anjello JothiRajan, Ph.D., India

Jothi is FDP Research Scholar, School of Physics, MaduraiKamarajUniversity, Madurai, India. He is also a lecturer at ArulAnandarCollege, Karumathur, Tamil Nadu. His specialty is nanotechnology research.
His wife who also contributed to some chapters, Arockiam Thaddeus, is a biology lecturer in JayarajAnnapackiamCollege for Women, Periyakulam, Theni District, Tamil Nadu, India.
Mary Ann Chen Ng, the Philippines/USA

Mary Ann is finishing her PhD in the Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Japan. Her dissertation is on environmentalism and ecotourism in the Philippines. Her M.Sc. was in bioethics from the University of Tsukuba. She has taught at the Ateneo de Manila University, University of the Philippines and Tsukuba Institute of Science and Technology. Her research interests include environmental ethics, feminist and cross-cultural bioethics. She currently resides in Southern California. /
Richard S. J. Weisburd, Ph.D., U.S.A./Japan
Richard is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Japan, where he teaches biology, oceanography, and scientific writing to both graduate and undergraduate students. Though Rick was born in New York and has made his home in Japan since 1990, he is a citizen of the Earth’s Quaternary biota. Rick is the editor-in-chief of ELSS, a scientific editing and translation company. His recent research has been conducted in Japan and China and is focused on environmental policy and ethics, especially related to biodiversity.

Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner, Ph.D., the Netherlands

Margaret is research fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) and the AmsterdamSchool for Social Science Research (ASSR), and lectures in the fields of Asian studies and cultural anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. Her work focuses on nationalism and processes of nation-state building in China and Japan and on biotechnology and society in Asia. She currently directs the Socio-genetic Marginalization in Asia Programme (SMAP) in co-operation with the Netherlands Science Organisation (NWO), the IIAS and the ASSR (2004 -2009).

M. Selvanayagam, Ph.D.,

Professor and Head, Dept. of Zoology, LoyolaCollege, Chennai, India. Director of the LIFE Institute, Loyola Institute of Frontier Energy. Specializes in environmental sciences and zoology.

Gursatej Gandhi, M.D., Ph.D., India

Reader, Department of Human Genetics, GuruNanakDevUniversity, Amritsar, India. Specializes in human genetics research, teaching and clinical practice.

Note that some authors did not provide their profile for distribution in which case only names are included under the chapters they contributed to.

Life is something we are all in together.

This book is intended to make people think, respect, love, and question.

We hope that this book will help readers develop their own bioethics.