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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Confucian Bioethics: Informed Consent in the Context of the Traditional Chinese Worldview

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description

The text refers to bioethics in China, in particular Confucian bioethics, and shows the medicine and bioethical issues in a broader cultural context. Traditional Chinese beliefs and customs affect the conceptualization and implementation of the various bioethical problems. The aim of the article is to analyse the problem of informed consent and cultural differences in its understanding and enforcement. Due to the very difterent perception of the relationship between the individual and the group in China, compared with individualistic cultures (Western Europę, North America, Australia) Chinese bioethicists revaluated the concept of informed consent by introducing a competitive concept of community-assisted informed consent and they treat it as an opposition to the Western one. While the concept of community-assisted informed consent is not only the specificity of the Chinese approach to bioethics, but it may become a useful tool in formulating Solutions in other collectivist cultures.