The 2023 Workshop Textbook for Certified HLA Technologists
Ethics in Transplantation
2023 Volume 30 Issue 2 Pages 72-77
Details
2023 Volume 30 Issue 2 Pages 72-77
Ethics has been known as "morality" or "the way of humanity". It is something that is ingrained in our bodies as we live our lives and is so commonplace that it is rarely described. "Law" involves coercion by society to maintain social order, whereas "ethics" regulates as an inner will belonging to the individual. Since it is impossible to establish all the rules of society by law, "minimum norms" that must be observed by all means are established as laws.
In the West, medical ethics follows the ideas of the Hippocratic school of ancient Greece, while in the East, "medicine is a benevolent art" has been traditionally held to have built a relationship of trust between medical professionals and the people who receive medical care for a long time.
Behind the rapid progress of science since the mid-20th century, inhumane acts committed by the Nazis during World War II, as revealed at the Nuremberg Trials, and in 1964, the Declaration of Helsinki was adopted to protect the rights of human subjects in medical research, asserting the public’s right to receive medical care. The importance of medical ethics, in which informed consent is indispensable, was endorsed in many countries. Assisted reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization, prenatal testing, and preimplantation testing have brought about discussions on bioethics. Organ transplantation, end-of-life care, and palliative medicine have naturally required high ethical standards from individuals, and the importance of ethics in these areas has been recognized by various professions.
And in the "World Declaration on Use of Science and Scientific Knowledge" of the 1999 Budapest World Science Congress, it was stated that all scientists should hold themselves to high ethical standards for science in society and for science for society. The "Ethical Guidelines for Physicians" issued by the Japan Medical Association in April 2022 also states that medicine is not only the practice of medicine, but also requires social awareness. This "sociality" has been at the root of medicine from BC to the present, and also in transplantation.
