It has been more than 80 years since Chinese intellectuals, struggling with the complexities of “science and philosophy of life,” debated the challenges of finding the moral wisdom needed to apply new scientific knowledge in ethically responsible ways. Could a moral compass be found? Would it be discovered in Chinese culture, or would it come from the West?

Advances in science and technology during the course of the 20th century have often outpaced progress in understanding “science and philosophy of life.” Nevertheless, the importance of the ethical dimensions of science and technology has increased in all countries, and there is little doubt that the new technologies of the early 21st century are already bestowing on us new moral conundrums. As advanced technologies and scientific research capabilities diffuse around the world, the ethical traditions which inform moral choice seemingly become more heterogeneous, and the need for reasoned, cross-cultural moral discourse increases. The Institut für Asienkunde in Hamburg is therefore to be congratulated for convening the “First International and Interdisciplinary Symposium on Aspects of Medical Ethics in China,” from which the 15 papers in this volume come.

There is no easy way to summarize the diversity of views presented in this provocative conference report. The authors include practising scientists from China and students of bioethics from China, Malaysia, Germany and the United States. But, the theme of eugenics – especially the ways in which advances in human genetics affect our moral stance towards eugenics – link a number of the papers. The atrocities of Nazi Germany strongly condition the views of the Western authors. Reacting, perhaps, to China's 1994 Law on Maternal and Infant Health Care, the latter seem to be urging Chinese researchers, medical practitioners, ethicists and policymakers to take the German experience to heart – even as China embraces the promises of the new genetic technologies. Thus, historian Sheila Faith Weiss' “Prelude to the maelstrom,” an informative account of the origins of Nazi eugenics in the 19th and early 20th-century culture of German medicine, is not so subtly subtitled, “A cautionary tale for contemporary China?” The Chinese authors acknowledge this “cautionary tale,” but also speak to the ethical challenges of new genetic technologies from a tradition with its own understandings of how practical knowledge and moral purpose are related, and how individual and collective well-being are reconciled.