Traditional Ethical Ideas on Life and Organ Transplantation in Japan

Abstract

For us doctors, especially neurosurgeons, a day hardly passes without confronting the death of people. However, all people are travelling from birth to death, which is the destination of all our lives. Until a few decades ago, birth and death of people were entirely in God’s providence, and medicine was considered to be a discipline to prevent and cure diseases to allow people to enjoy more healthy lives until God calls them. Recently, however, with the remarkable advances of medicine, concepts of birth and death have been diversified and become artificially manipulable. Concerning birth, for example, in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, surrogate mothers, selection of sex at conception, and planning of the time of birth have become available, and more recently, the production of human clones has become an issue. Concerning death, also, the position to recognize brain death as well as conventional cardiac death as death of an individual has been introduced in association with organ transplantation.