Abstract
Questionnaire surveys of university students were carried out to know their views of death/life and their understanding of most advanced science technology. The results suggested that these young students were affected strongly by the Japanese traditional view about death/life, ie : the worship of ancestors and/or the spirit of the dead, the sanctity of graves which must be given priority in values; the strong aversion to damage any part of the dead bodies as it is believed that one should enter the world of the dead with an intact body, the faith in the existence of the soul and the fear of curses, etc. The interesting point here is that most of the students answered they were not affiliated with any specific religion and did not consider themselves to be religious people. According to this data, it appears that despite being born into a highly information-orientated society, the students were still affected by traditional Japanese folk beliefs. Such traditional views might affect their ethical view about advanced science technologies, for example, organ transplantation, cloning, et. al.. On the other hand, the data showed that they had interests in the ethical problems caused by the development of advanced science technology. But at the same time, they misunderstood some biological facts relating to these technologies and their judgment on the ethical issues of applying the technologies to humans are based on criteria of image rather than scientific knowledge. When the medical value was emphasized, they recognized cloning of humans as good, however when the medical value was not illustrated, they answered that the application of cloning technique toward humans was wrong. The opinions toward ethical problems seemed to change based on how the technologies were described to them. These data show the importance of education for them in school. Not only the concept of bioethics, but also the basic science should be taught to all young people to understand advanced technology.
