Asian Bioethics Review

This editorial takes the opportunity provided by the commemoration of the first anniversary of Typhoon Haiyan to highlight bioethical issues arising in situations that render human beings vulnerable to the negative impact of ethical mistakes or exploitation. The first part pertains to vulnerable groups that are the subject of papers contributed to this issue of the Asian Bioethics Review. The second part pertains to a particular group of victims of Typhoon Haiyan that deserve special attention.

In “The Compensatory Nature of Personhood”, Alsuwaigh and Krishna set out to explore palliative care patients’ own perspectives on personhood within the context of end-of-life care. Using in-depth interviews, the authors seek to probe those perspectives as an alternative to using “tools that have not been validated within the end-of-life setting”. Their view is that determining the perspectives of palliative care patients themselves is critical because “family-centric East Asian societies … place great value on relational ties and social interactions drawn from Confucian-inspired views of personhood”, leaving palliative care still struggling to find support within mainstream medical practice.

The interviews revolve around the question, “What makes you who you are?” The findings make for interesting comparison with concepts of personhood in academic literature. Seemingly naive and even lacking in consistency, the individual accounts nevertheless could be seen as an indication of how human beings can be rendered vulnerable in the their twilight years if end-of-life decisions were to be made on the basis of “expert” or theoretical concepts of personhood that are divorced from these self-reported notions. In effect, this effort addresses the vulnerability of palliative care patients to treatment plans that seek to protect them without fully understanding what they themselves care most about. If the effort is successful, it will help future patients to get the kind of care that they themselves truly desire rather than the kind of care (or protection) that they are presumed to like. Thus, the authors seek to empower the patients to deal with their vulnerability rather than to allow physicians or [End Page 327] other caregivers to try to protect them paternalistically by speaking on their behalf.

In “The Philippine Reproductive Health Legislation: Politics beyond Metaphysics”, Manaloto claims that in passing the new law on reproductive health, the Philippine Supreme Court has effectively voted for “peaceful coexistence of all groups in society”, thus abandoning a metaphysical in favour of a political approach to resolving issues. According to him, the Court has sent the message that it would give a lot of weight to the legitimating effect of the process of consultation rather than delve into the metaphysical basis of reasoning. Nevertheless, one who is not convinced of a strongly metaphysical approach will recognise that the new law has been anticipated by many women who have long been rendered vulnerable by the strict implementation of the old legislation. The old legislation was supposed to protect women during periods in their lives when they are vulnerable, even when the supposed protection goes against their own sense of what is important for them. Until recently, such legislation took away from women crucial options regarding their reproductive health. The new law also responds to women’s vulnerabilities but does not take a protectionist approach that many of them do not care about. Instead, it addresses the vulnerabilities by empowering women to deal with them by making their own autonomous choices.

Foong Patrick Chee Kuen writes about the possible exploitation of women in research relating to therapeutic cloning and Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT). He argues that the ethical concerns can be effectively addressed through a tight legal oversight consistent with existing regulatory framework governing research involving human embryos in Australia. According to him, the Australian regulatory regime can serve as a model for other countries. He takes the view that “the revised guidelines expressly provide for the strict observance of consent principles for participation in medical research, prohibition of the buying and selling of eggs (with the exception of reimbursement of reasonable expenses for out-of-pocket expenses) and prohibition of donors in categories of unequal...