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Enhancement and Desire: Japanese Qualms about Where Biotechnology is Taking Us

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

William R. LaFleur
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Extract

In what follows, I draw on things I have found in Japanese discussions of bioethics in order to clarify some aspects of the ethics of biotechnological enhancement. In doing so it will, I hope, become evident that what we might call a “religious” component is in Japan somewhat differently construed than in the contexts with which we are more likely to be familiar in North America. And in the end an attempt will be made here to show that the materials considered give us all – not just the Japanese – reasons for going forward with biological enhancement technologies only on condition that extreme caution be exercised. The fast-moving, oncoming traffic in this domain ought to be forced, these materials suggest, to come up to a caution-demanding signal – not a green light but one that is unambiguously amber. Caution and perhaps even a full stop appear to be in order.

Type
Symposium
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , Spring 2008 , pp. 65 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2008

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