Asian Bioethics Review

181 Enhancing the Richness of Bioethics There is a broad range of topics and issues covered in this issue of the Asian Bioethics Review, reflecting the broad range of bioethics as articulated in Asia. The article by Allen Andrew Alvarez on preintrinsic value in relation to healthcare rationing serves as an example of bioethical reflection that aims specifically to respond to some of the most pressing problems in the Asian region. Alvarez tries to avoid the trodden path of dominant healthcare rationing debates that take for granted a context of scarcity, but not to a degree often encountered in developing world countries. While most rationing analyses tend to assume moderate scarcity, the paper notes that extreme poverty has not been given enough attention in discussions of the problem of healthcare rationing. The paper seeks to examine the implications of extreme scarcity for healthcare distribution. Since governments in low-income countries have a very limited capacity to provide basic healthcare to many of their poor citizens and considering that the majority of the world’s poor live in Asia, addressing this issue has crucial relevance. In a context of moderate scarcity, it seems too easy to just accept a correspondingly moderate level of deprivation that rationing might require. Alvarez argues against a similar attitude in the event of extreme scarcity, since adopting the same assumptions could result in justifying extreme standards of deprivation in rationing, e.g. even depriving the poor the most basic and inexpensive healthcare they would need. Advocates of social protection for the poor, especially in these times of global financial crises, could find in some of the arguments presented by Alvarez a valuable tool for debate. Hans-Martin Sass calls attention to the use of the term “bioethics” by the German Friz Jahr in a 1927 editorial in the leading German science journal of his time. The use of the term by Jahr preceded the often cited publication on bioethics in the United States by Van Rensellaer Potter, which came only in the Asian Bioethics Review September 2009 Volume 1, Issue 3 181–184 F R O M T H E E D I T O R F r o m t h e E d i t o r A s i a n B i o e t h i c s R e v i e w S e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 9 Vo l u m e 1 , I s s u e 3 182 1970s. But Sass’ point is not to claim that bioethics had its origins in Germany instead of in the United States. (Indeed, it seems pointless to try to pin the origin of bioethics to one location when its roots could actually take us back to multiple points of origin.) Rather, he takes the opportunity to track the origins of ideas associated with the emergence of bioethics and to acknowledge their affinity to Asian thought. For instance, he reminds us — or those of us who need reminding — that respect for humans and respect for the entire world of “bios”, i.e. respect for all forms of life as enunciated by these twentieth century bioethicists, have much earlier precedents in the ideas of Taoist reverence for nature and Buddhist compassion with all forms of suffering life. (Sass makes it a point to clarify that in order to fully understand Jahr’s thought, one has to see that he disagrees with “Buddhist fanatics” who spare even deadly snakes on the grounds that they also are our brothers and sisters, saying that we consider it our duty to kill dangerous animals, if we can.) In support of the view that Jahr was a pioneer in bioethics, Sass cites the German pastor’s argument that new scientific knowledge always is a quest for ethical reflection and resolve to find appropriate guiding and stewarding cultures and ethics. He takes into account a number of articles written between 1927 and 1934 where Jahr characterised bioethics in several ways to support its recognition as having professional identity: (1) as a new academic discipline, (2) as a necessary moral attitude, conviction and conduct in recognising and respecting all forms of...