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6 Am. J. Bioethics 1 (2006)

handle is hein.journals/ajbio6 and id is 1 raw text is: 





Bioethics in a Global Village
Mark Aulisio, Case Western Reserve University


It is no secret that bioethics outside of North America has
been growing rapidly in recent years, as is attested to by
the number of new bioethics centers, departments, orga-
nizations and journals that have emerged in nearly every
corner of the globe. In addition to the International Asso-
ciation of Bioethics, there are now numerous international,
national, regional and local bioethics centers, departments,
and other organizations. Bioethics is so well established
globally that it has found its way to the World Health Or-
ganization and the United Nations; it has truly become a
citizen of the global village.
   The rapid spread and development of bioethics is due
in part, I think, to the fact that many of its core issues cut
across traditional boundaries, be they disciplinary, cultural,
religious, national or international. Wherever one sits and
whatever one's interests, bioethical questions tend to en-
gage. Those so engaged tend to respond. That being said,
how such issues emerge and how they are dealt with may
substantially differ from one culture, religion or nation to
the next. Dialogue across these boundaries is important
both for the mutual understanding it engenders and for the
light it sheds on potential approaches to the issues. For this
reason, I am very pleased to announce the inaugural edition
of our new section, International Bioethics, which will
be edited in collaboration with my colleagues in the De-
partment of Bioethics of Case Western Reserve University.
Before introducing the articles that comprise this inaugural
section, I want to discuss briefly our hopes for International
Bioethics in The Americanjournal of Bioethics (AOB).
    In establishing a section devoted to international
bioethics, we at AOB and at Case Western have no il-
lusions that we are shining a bright light where none has
shone before, or that we have suddenly invented the wheel.
We are well aware that there are a great many people in
North America, including some of our departmental and
editorial board colleagues, who have spent years working
on international bioethics issues. Indeed, it is at least partly
thanks to their work that bioethics has become a citizen
of the global village. Even more important for bioethics'
global citizenship, however, has been the rise of outstanding
bioethics scholarship the world over. Scholars are address-
ing bioethical issues, both old and new, across Europe and
Russia, in Australia and New Zealand, across Asia and the
Middle East, and throughout South America and Africa.
Offered two to three times per year, AJOB's International
Bioethics Section will, as a particular point of emphasis,
bring to bear the insights and perspectives of non-Western
researchers on issues of relevance for bioethics here and


abroad. In keeping with its orientation, AOB will continue
to emphasize international engagement between bioethics
discourse in North America, particularly the United States,
and that of other parts of the globe. In this way, Interna-
tional Bioethics will, we hope, serve as a forum for dialogue
across national and cultural boundaries, engendering mu-
tual understanding, and shedding new light on old issues
while occasionally identifying altogether new ones.
    This hope is rooted in a belief that there is something
about bioethics that makes it a particularly good conveyance
for crossing boundaries. My experience, and that of my col-
leagues at Case Western who will lend editorial support
to International Bioethics, has born this out time and
again. Bioethics is the common interest that brings to-
gether our eleven full-time primary faculty from disparate
disciplinary and professional backgrounds, including phi-
losophy, religious studies, psychiatry, anthropology, soci-
ology, history, public health, and law. At present, nearly
all of our full-time faculty members are involved in in-
ternational work. Our department has formal ties with
bioethics efforts in Uganda, Nigeria, Romania, Russia, The
Netherlands, France, Spain, Israel, Korea and Japan. These
ties include collaborative research (Japan, France, Spain,
Romania, and Korea), scholar and faculty exchange (Rus-
sia, Romania, Japan, The Netherlands, France, and Spain),
and multiple educational initiatives (international inten-
sives in Israel, The Netherlands, France, and Belgium, and
NIH Fogarty Center support used to train a representa-
tive annually from each of four countries: Nigeria, Uganda,
Romania and Russia). Independent of these formal inter-
national efforts, our Master and Doctoral programs have
attracted students from Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Israel,
Japan, and Taiwan. If bioethics were not especially well
suited to traversing international boundaries, we could not
have developed such strong and varied international ties.
We will draw on these ties, made possible by bioethics it-
self, and the expertise of our faculty to ensure the quality of
ongoing International Bioethics discourse in these pages.
Indeed, two of the articles in this inaugural issue (those by
Akabayashi and Slingsby, and Jung and Hyun) are direct
results of international collaborations by members of our de-
partment, made possible by the boundary -crossing nature of
bioethics.
    The articles that comprise this inaugural issue illus-
trate, I think, how and why bioethics travels so well, and
what we have to learn through expanded international and
intercultural discourse. Consider, for example, Akabayashi
and Slingsby's Informed Consent Revisited: Japan and the


The American Journal of Bioethics, 6(1): 1-4, 2006
Copyright g Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1526-5161 print / 1536-0075 online
DOI: 10.1080/15265160500496641


ajob 1

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