In this paper, I discuss the significance of informed consent（ IC） at the time of its origin in the United States. There are two settings wherein IC is applied ― human research and clinical medicine. In clinical medicine, two legal principles ― battery and negligence ― are relevant in lawsuits. I show that the core of IC comprises the principle of “negligence,” whose significance is clarified in this paper in detail. This principle means “an enlargement of the scope of doctors’ responsibility”, which urges us to redefine the relationship between doctors and patients. Finally, on these grounds, I consider the ethical implications of “self-determination of patients.” The essence of IC is that it changes the order of priority, from the previous relation, “the benefit of the patient ＞ the will of the patient,” to the current relation “the will of the patient ＞ the benefit of the patient”. In other words, the essence of IC is to respect the will of patients and provide medical benefits by assisting them.

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Recently, a growing number of scientific studies and publications have focused on loneliness. They reveal that loneliness influences a variety of psychological and physical diseases, and even mortality. Some researchers point out that loneliness, just like smoking, is one of the most crucial factors contributing to the development of many diseases. However, the human experience is essentially lonely or existential. Philosophers have emphasized the positive effect of loneliness, suggesting that it may provide us with maturity and wisdom. I believe we have to realize that humans can be regarded as dual structures, experiencing being both lonely and relational. Scientific research on loneliness is apt to focus on the relationship aspect of humans. By ignoring the dual structure of humanity and depending more on the scientific research on loneliness, medical professionals may encourage people to avoid loneliness. This approach may overlook the maturity brought about by the pain of being lonely. It is true that adequate medical and social strategies are indispensable to address loneliness as a risk factor, but medical professionals also need to understand the positive effect of loneliness in our life. There must be adequate treatments and scientific researches focusing on the positive aspect of loneliness.

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With the development of assisted reproductive technology (ART), the number of families having children through donor conception is increasing. In Japan, there is no overall legislation regulating ART, but many offspring have already been born through donor insemination. Because of the condition of donor anonymity, they do not have the right to know their origin. Overseas, the number of jurisdictions abolishing donor anonymity and allowing offspring the right to know their origin is increasing, but even in those jurisdictions, offspring born before the enforcement of legislation are not guaranteed the right to access information about their donors. By reference to the case of Victoria, Australia, this paper analyzes the issues concerning legislation on offspring’s retrospective right to know their origin. The Victorian Law Reform Committee tabled its report in March 2012 recommending that the Victorian Government retrospectively allow donor-conceived offspring to obtain identifying information about their donors. In response to this recommendation, the Victorian Government carried out a further investigation of the opinions of past donors and gave its final response in August 2013, stating that offspring would be allowed to know their donor’s identity only with the consent of their respective donors. By analyzing the responses of society, especially those of donors who had donated their gametes under the condition of anonymity, the problems underlying the introduction of legislation allowing offspring the retrospective right to know their origin are discussed from the perspective of conflict and balance among the rights of offspring, parents and donors.

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Today, mutual collaboration among the various fields that provide human services is being promoted as an essential challenge for implementation of these services. This is also true for the medical care field; however, collaboration and cooperation between the different types of medical jobs is not sufficient. This paper has three objectives. First, it clarifies the roles of the locations and targets that it is handling based on the typification of Interdisciplinary care. In this regard, it defines “collaboration” and “autonomy,” both of which are required for Interdisciplinary care. Second, the paper defines how the different types of jobs in nursing are collaboration to provide Interdisciplinary care. Moreover, the paper evaluates the training and management of such jobs. Then, in light of historical studies of nursing and the findings of this study, problems in nursing are analyzed and discussed from the view point of“ collaboration” and “autonomy” defined in this paper. Third, this paper discusses methods for ensuring effective and efficient collaboration and coordination, as well as the autonomy in professional medical care jobs. By achieving these objectives, this paper discusses the problems and challenges a medical team faces that is recognized in the nursing profession from the perspective of collaboration and autonomy.

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Traditional Mongolian medicine is a system that assimilates both the theory and practice of Tibetan medicine, which entered into Mongolian society along with the spread of Tibetan Buddhism over the last several centuries. Traditional medicine in Inner Mongolia was then forcibly modernized when the Japanese colonial medical enterprise developed in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia during the first half of the 20th century. Moreover, after the establishment of People’s Republic of China, western modern medicine was popularized throughout China, including Inner Mongolia. Meanwhile, traditional Chinese medicine too became widespread into the Mongolian-settled areas, as ethnic Han Chinese people settled in Inner Mongolia. Mongolian medicine was then admitted into the official professional medical sector by the government, alongside Chinese medicine. Subsequently, the government established institutions in the higher educational system for traditional Mongolian medicine and set up traditional medical hospitals. In recent decades, however, with the spread of globalization, this medicine has lost its main position in the medical order of Mongolian society and gradually been transformed into an ethnically sustainable form of alternative medicine. For traditional Mongolian medicine to sustain itself alongside other types of practice will involve continuing modernization to satisfy the needs of local consumers.

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According to Jeff McMahan’s brain view, personal identity is preserved by the existence of a person, a conscious entity with consciousness function due to brain function. An organism which has no consciousness function or irreversibly loses it, but has only integrative function is regarded as an entity, one which is essentially different from a person who possesses consciousness function. In this article, I examine the personal identity problem of McMahan’s brain view, analyzing the issues regarding the existence of an embryo, that of a patient in a persistent vegetative state (PVS), and the relationship between the two entities, ‘a person’ and ‘a human organism’, respectively. Contrary to McMahan’s view, I first maintain that we should consider an early embryo who has no brain function yet grows as the same entity, an organism, with the acquirement of consciousness function due to brain function while changing in different phases of life, not being a different entity, a person, with that function. Second, I claim that a PVS patient who is presumed to no longer possess cerebrum function does not lose interest in living and is alive as an organism with the same identity prior to that condition. Third, I argue that McMahan’s brain view under which the two different entities, a person and a human organism, are presumed to coexist in an organism falls into‘ the too many thinkers problem’ in principle and thus, it will not become the theory which could consistently explain personal identity.

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This paper aims to clarify how a higher brain dysfunction, Kikuko Yamada recovers from her visual agnosia. According to her notes, the vision damage makes many errors of judging and doing in the everyday life of her. For example, she is not able to operate the water closet, have a meal, and go down the stairs. Sometimes, someone within herself says why don’t you try touching instead of looking to her. After much difficulty, at length, she tries touching many things. Thus, Yamada escapes from the dependence on vision in the modern life centered around vision. Touch as somatic sensation is dull in comparison with vision, audition, taste, olfaction as special sensations. But touch is the base or very root of all sensations. Therefore, touch is the certain, unquestionable, and stable sensation. Then, things which I can touch are manifest to me. Yamada is taught to try touching the surrounding things in order to pass judgment, by someone within herself. Yamada named this someone Zenkochan（ Frontal） of Zentouyou（ Frontal lobe）. Of course, Zenkochan is not the frontal lobe but personality of Yamada. So, she is another“ I,” that is personality. Thus, personality is self, and this self calls Yamada’s attention to touch.

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