Medicine has been fundamentally humanistic and ethical in its nature since its origin. It is not a pure science, as is erroneously held by most modern Japanese medical researchers. It is an applied science endowed with evident objectives, i.e. healing diseases and promoting the health of people. Moreover, "disease" and "health" are both value-laden concepts. Human conduct is judged as good or evil according to some value-laden criteria, so it is impossible to separate medicine from ethics. The word "ethics" is derived from Greek "ethos", which originally meant the custom of the people. Customs are different according to time, race, religion etc.. There is not one single ethic on this earth but there are plural ethics. This pluralism of ethics is fitted to modern democratic societies. In the field of medical ethics, current Japanese press comments are unduely concentrated on the up-to- date problems arising from high technologies (e.g.in vitro fertilization, brain death, organ transplantation etc.) However, these topics cover only partial and extraordinary phenomena in the whole of medical practice. We should rather pursue "daily medical ethics" based on everyday encounters of doctors and patients. Above all, reconsideration of the usual doctor's paternalism and popularization of informed consent throughout the medical world in Japan are urgent issues. The medical humanities have been taught in the University of Occupational and Environmental Health for 1st to 6th year medical students as a required course since the beginning of the university (1978). Some defects of lectures as mere delivery of knowledge were criticized and several new teaching techniques have been introduced. For example, in their "early exposure", freshmen are asked to attend to disabled children for 24 hours, and in "nursing practice", 5th year students are assigned to the nursing teams in the university hospital as apprentices. Through these practices the students learn by their own experiences how to find ethical problems in actual medical practice and promote their sensitivity to sick people. These techniques in the education of medical ethics as applications of behavioral sciences will develop further in Japanese medical education.
