Medicine, Philosophy and Bioethics on Human Life

Abstract

This paper shows 1) the ‘specific etiology’ (as the basic principle of contemporary medicine) divides people’s lives into two categories; ‘normal’/healthy or ‘abnormal’/ill or ‘disabled’; and 2) particularly by the very medicine those who are classified seriously ill or challenged(or ‘disabled’) have been usually stigmatized and treated as ‘carriers’ (with HIV, leprosy, ‘genetic disorders’, ‘psychiatric disorders’, persistent vegetative state or ‘brain dead’ state, or anything).

Healthy people usually see them ‘futile or dangerous deviants’ against the world and discriminate against them. This way of thinking is sociologically called the ‘victim blaming ideology’, or a kind of ‘jiko-sekinin’ (self-responsibility) in Japanese that means any victim has his/her own cause of the state and therefore must be blamed first and only does self-help by him/herself.

3) This paper, finally, presents a ‘thought experiment’ to demonstrate an antithesis beyond the ideology.

It is an ‘altruistic victim theory’ derived from a ‘migawari-jizo’ or a Buddhist saint that acts as a substitute in other’s place in the ancient Buddhist sutra. In short, all victims sacrifice themselves by being ill or challenged in the healthy people’s place: they, thus, paradoxically help the healthy people. This way of victim’s life can be ‘altruism’. This theory of life is worth discussing further as a matter of bioethics: it gives us a hint considering back to its origins of human reciprocity or mutual aid.