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8.2. The purposes of Bioethics Education: Lessons from Japan and Asia

- Darryl Macer, Ph.D.
Director, Eubios Ethics Institute;
Director, IUBS Bioethics Program;
<http://eubios.info/index.html>
Institute of Biological Sciences, University of Tsukuba,
Tsukuba Science City, 305-8572, Japan
Email: asianbioethics@yahoo.co.nz
International Behaviourome web site:
http://eubios.info/menmap.html
Behaviourome listserve
   <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Behaviourome/>
Education listserve
   <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Bioethicseducation/>

1. What is bioethics?

Bioethics is both a word and a concept. The word comes to us only from 1970 yet the concept comes from human heritage thousands of years old. Bioethics is love of life, balancing benefits and risks of choices and decisions. This heritage can be seen in all cultures, religions, and in ancient writings from around the world. We in fact cannot trace the origin of bioethics back to their beginning, as the relationships between human beings within their society, within the biological community, and with nature and God, are formed at an earlier stage then our history would tell us. The ethical principle of beneficence, which we could say means loving good, requires us to develop ways to help others in the world.

The social and ethical issues raised by the use of modern biotechnology are being more widely discussed every year. Events such as the cloning of mammals have raised even wider debate on these topics, and have filled the imagination of many people across the globe (Macer and Ng, 2000). Citizens of all ages need to make ethical decisions on how they use science and technology and its products.

2. Bioethics education

Human beings have a right to exercise their mind and ingenuity to create alternative solutions to problems that they see to be important. As long as this creativity does not harm someone else, this right to think and then apply this thinking to innovations, is recognized on this planet as a fundamental human right. Bioethics education is necessary.

In 1991 Macer conducted a series of surveys on public, high school teachers and scientists throughout Japan, which found a wide range of concerns were expressed about biotechnology, as well as many hopes (Macer, 1992). In 1993 further surveys were conducted on the public and students in ten countries in the Asia/Pacific region in the International Bioethics Survey and there was universal agreement for the inclusion of more ethical and social issues associated with science and technology to be taught to students in those countries (Australia, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, The Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Thailand) (Macer, 1994).

High school teachers in five countries (Australia, India, Japan, New Zealand and Singapore) were also surveyed with the International Bioethics Education Survey (Macer et al. 1996; Pandian and Macer, 1998; Macer and Ong, 1999). The results found similarly high degree of diversity of response in every country, with few country based differences in the way people respond to the issues, despite the different policies found in some of these countries to particular bioethical issues. One of the major concerns that teachers had was the lack of teaching materials that were available. The International Bioethics Education Survey suggested three main aims by educators: Respect for life; How to make decisions over moral dilemmas raised by science and technology, and Specific areas related to professions, e.g. animal rights, human research, informed consent.

Some public concern about science is based on a lack of scientific knowledge, and some is based on an inability to reason and to balance risks and benefits, and relate these between alternative technologies. There are also justified concerns about the way society is changing and what are cultural limits to technology. Education is vital to address the concerns people have about ethical or social impacts of biotechnology, and to develop more informed debate.

Research has shown that school students can reason about bioethical dilemmas (Macer et al., 1997), and it has an advantage that almost all citizens attend school. There are also some arguments from educational psychology that persons develop important moral processes in their teenage years, so that university level education may be too late in many persons to have a major impact on the thought processes that the person will have through their whole life. School education also stimulates public education as students discuss with their families. A further reason for targeting school level education is that school students are more likely to follow texts that university level students, which can mean greater impact of teaching material. In fact, already in high school texts in India and Japan, which have been surveyed, there are some important concepts in environmental and medical ethics that are discussed, however students are seldom challenged to consider how to approach the moral dilemmas that technologies pose (Bhardwaj and Macer, 1999). Evidence for moral education suggests that bioethical reasoning of people is enhanced by active consideration of bioethics dilemmas (Macer et al., 1996; Macer, 2002).

Public education is intertwined to media discussion of bioethics issues, but school education has the advantage that it can be taught in more depth, and more independently, than media coverage. However, in actual practice many teachers use media cuttings or videos as their source of material to teach about bioethics issues. Macer formed and coordinates a bioethics education network around Japan of 100 high school teachers, which are involved in biology education, and have been measuring the effectiveness of different styles of teaching since 1996 (Asada and Macer, 1998).

While university level education of bioethics can be effective for professional education, such as medical students, of scientists, few countries in Asia have classes on bioethics for these professionals also. Despite a decade of attention, there has not been great progress in Japan or Asia on the inclusion of bioethics in science and technology debates (Macer, 1992). It is also desirable to introduce more materials into university level, and in addition these studies can aid strategies for widening informed public debate and developing the quality of public discussion. Therefore it will be useful for some of the teaching materials used in high school level to be tested in university classes as well.

Following discussions with Dr. Mihaela Serbulea of Sasakawa Peace Foundation (SPF), Eubios Ethics Institute submitted an application under the Bioethics Education theme to SPF. We believed this multicultural project is consistent with the values of SPF towards the coexistence of pluralistic values, and to improve society. Interactive bioethics discussion has been shown to develop an understanding of different people's views (Maekawa and Macer, 2001). The application was successful and has gained funding from the two-year research project. The project will not only help find out whether different people share the same views of the challenges of science, by analysis of the comments people make in response to case studies, but can also be expected to contribute to greater decision making for the people involved in the future.

This project will aim to produce teaching materials for bioethics education in different countries. This will include a textbook that could be used in school and university classes to teach about bioethical issues, and on-line free access materials. One type of class it can be used in is English (or foreign language) class, but it will not be limited to any one particular field. Nor is it inseparably tied to efforts that attempt to push inclusion of bioethics into government-set school curriculum. The material will also assess the possible criteria that could be used to measure the success of bioethics education, and the effectiveness of different forms of education for making mature citizens.

The question of what cases to include in the teaching materials/text book is being addressed by meeting with teachers, discussing with bioethics researchers, and is ultimately addressed by including a variety of at least 20 cases so that teachers can select some which they feel most comfortable to teach, and/or judge to be most useful for the students in the class. We welcome feedback on the cases available on the Eubios home page and in a yahoo group ("Bioethicseducation"). Each chapter includes a basic reading and illustration, followed by about ten questions to guide the thinking processes. Some of the issues are controversial, but a balanced approach to these issues is needed, as education should prepare citizens for difficult moral dilemmas that they may face in their life. The first version will be made in English intended for use in Japan, with some local variation in theme to make the cases relevant to the countries being tested. The cases will also introduce the students to cross-cultural perspectives on these issues, not just the culture of ethnicity but also the culture of technophiles and technophobes.

Cooperation to test teaching materials in different countries, in particular in Australia, China, Japan, India, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan is envisaged. There will be tape recordings of the classes made and collection of written essays and homework done by the students, which will be analyzed to improve the chapter first drafts. Based on the results of the initial survey results, in the second year cases will be improved to increase the range of ideas that the students express. The first criteria to be assessed will be bioethical maturity, and diversity of ideas. Another measure will be the use of reasoned approaches to making decisions, combining data with concepts. At the end of the second year a model textbook will be produced in second edition style, which will be made openly available on the Internet. Publishers will be sought to make hard copies.

In order to understand bioethics, every citizen needs to develop his or her bioethical maturity. Bioethically mature means a person, or a society that can balance the benefits and risks of alternative options, and make well-considered decisions, and talk about it. Diversity is also necessary because there is little hard evidence to show that any system actually helps people make better decisions. Through international networking of the trials of chapters in different countries and schools it is hoped that students will understand the diversity of views that people have in many countries.

One of the most difficult questions in bioethics education is how to assess the criteria of success. One concept that has been used by Macer (1994) is "Bioethical maturity". To assess this we can count the number of ideas for a benefit or risk that people have to make a preliminary mental map (described below, Macer, 2002a). A map of ideas will also examine how many different ideas people have, and the way they can understand others views. Another measure is the way people use ethical principles in making moral decisions, which is assessed by looking for key words and concepts in the answers the students make to questions.

Part of the project will be to study which criteria are most suitable, and how the different criteria can be examined. For example, we have used discourse analysis and other keyword based analysis to examine university student bioethics homework reports. The academic literature and teaching community does not have consensus on the best criteria to measure, or even on the desirable goals of bioethics education. Some teachers think to teach students to respect life is important, while others think practical decision making and a balanced view is more of a goal. We aim to provide a material that can be used for both.

We invite more persons to be involved in the writing stage, and especially in contacting high school teachers in different countries for testing chapters in classes.

3. Mental mapping project - the human behaviourome

One of the most interesting questions before a thinking being is whether we can comprehend the ideas and thoughts of other beings, and conversely whether they can also read our mind. In terms of evolution there could be survival benefit by the capacity to be able to fully understand the thinking of others, both for direct competitive benefit and also for the spirit of altruistic cooperation. Although the human mind appears to be infinitely complex and the diversity of human kind and culture has been considered vast, I would like to repeat my 1994 hypothesis that the number of ideas that human beings have is finite (Macer, 1994), and now I call for a project to map the ideas of the human mind.

While we approach the end of the human genome project, we continue to investigate human genetic diversity through various means and by looking at the different sets of markers, for example the Haplotype Mapping Project (see Suda and Macer, in this book). The human brain mapping project is still a decade away from making a map of the neuronal connections (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/neuroinformatics/index.cfm). Once we achieve a human brain map we will still be left with the above question, how do we think? While these projects are of great scientific value in understanding who we are, I would argue that we have already the means to embark upon a human mental map with the goal of describing the diversity of ideas a human being makes in any given situation or dilemma (Macer, 2002a). I call this the behaviourome or human mental map. Such a map is not of a physical structure but a map of ideas.

There are several uses of such a project to make a human mental map. These include:
1) To understand ourselves, and whether the number of ideas is really finite.
2) To compare mental maps and idea diversity between persons and species.
3) To aid in policy making to make policy that respects the diversity of people in a culture, and globally. This would help develop bioethics for the people by the people (Macer, 1994).
4) If we can make individual mental maps, this would offer persons assistance when making moral decisions. This would give them a chance to consider all their ideas, and to make a more considered moral choices. This would also be useful in the testing and implementation of better bioethics education.

Even more fundamental than how do we think is the question what is thinking? What is an idea? There are various definitions. Ideas do include thinking that is linguistically expressible. They also appear to include concepts that may not be linguistically expressible, for example memory. Memory of bad events can serve a protective function for the future. There are also memories that appear to go beyond mere protection. For example, elephants have been observed to visit the bones and tusks at sites where their relatives died, picking up the relics and passing them between each other. This behaviour can be repeated over many years, and reminds us of the memorials humans make to their deceased relatives. Incidentally, the elephant bone passing reminds us of Japanese culture, where the only objects that can be passed between two people by chopsticks are the bones of cremated relatives. Both these practices stem from ideas.

Ideas are linked to rationality, but ideas may be considered as something pre-rational. Rationality emerges after the processing of ideas, in what we call thinking. Do only humans think? If we consider thinking to be the processing of motor images or sensory images it clearly emerged much earlier in evolution. In ethical theory usually animals that can plan and dream of the future are considered as being of higher rationality, and therefore need to be given greater protection. While there has been much enthusiasm with the discovery of a single gene that is very important in human speech, FOXP2 (Enard, et al., 2002), as it may have enabled the social emergence of modern human communities, we do not understand yet the extent to which the diversity of ideas is extended by linguistic dialogue (whether vocalized or not).

An idea mapping project has to start with a working definition of what would be counted as an idea. We could define an idea as the mental conceptualization of something, including physical objects, an action or behaviour that was made or could be made in the future, or a past, present or future sensory experience. Figure 1 is an example of the interplay between the multiple ideas and the situation that is behind a single response to a dilemma. The mental mapping project would want to map all the ideas related to each possible choice of a possible response as well as the actual responses that were made in different cases.

Is the number of ideas finite, uncountable or infinite? While ideas, actions, and subsequent responses vary between different situations, I believe the number of ideas and choices of response (Figure 1) are not infinite. Which approach is most useful for mapping ideas? The source of ideas include personal history, genetics, culture, family, and upbringing. These influences lead to the creation of the individual human mind. While the fact that there are numerous influences upon a person's ideas might suggest that the mind is infinite, when we examine these carefully, we can also see the similarity of some influences, both internal, like the common life plans, and external, like global media or religious traditions.

If a human being is faced with a given dilemma and situation, for example, "do we want to kill a cow to eat a steak? ", we could see a finite number of possible options. If the question is put so bluntly, we could imagine one set of responses that would say that in order to survive we have to eat the steak. Many in modern society allocate the task of killing animals to specific groups of people, thus avoiding the unpleasant task of killing the cow. In fact we have seen this trend in recent centuries so that it even led to classifications inside some societies of persons who did this, like the burakumin of Japan. Another set of responses to killing the cow would consider what the future interests of the person in using the resources are, e.g. killing a cow provides a meal. If the cow is killed today there will be one less cow to kill tomorrow. This way of thinking could develop different ideas which are culture specific, for example, a community wide response to have a feast, or the development of butcher shops, supermarkets, larger home freezers, salted or pickled beef. Another set of responses could say that we do not kill the cow but we will eat carrots instead. The responses are formed after considering a variety of ideas, so one way that has been used to study mental processing is link all the ideas behind a response.

The above example is a rather simple example of a moral choice, but similar methods may be applied when we face other moral dilemmas. The normal way of understanding ideas of other beings is through mental processing of our brain. We can imagine evolutionary advantages for a being to be able to understand what another being wanted to do. This ability for communication of ideas has been a field of study, in animal behaviour. We are still left with the question however of measuring the range of the actual ideas themselves, not just the way they are expressed and the communication between individuals.

If we define an idea as above, namely the mental conceptualization of something, including physical objects, an action or sensory experience, then the number of objects in the universe of a living being is finite. Both the number of possible choices for action and the sensory states of animals are finite. In that sense we can expect to be able to count ideas. The initial methodology would be to separate classes of ideas, which I suggested (Macer, 2002ab) could be separated as follows:
conceptualization of physical objects;
psychological meanings of images associated with objects (like colours, intensity);
memories;
plans for both short and long term future (there could be division of plans between those intended in the current waking period and those intended for a future waking period);
intention to modify behaviour of self;
intention to modify behaviour of surrounding beings and the environment;
processing of sensory states (like pain, pleasure, libido);
inhibition of a response based on immediate evolutionary benefit (like cultural and religious inhibitions to what has been called selfish genes, e.g. memes (Dawkins, 1976));
interactive conceptualization of ideas in a community based response.

Some ideas may not fit neatly into one of these groups, so either multiple listing in one of these groups or subdivision of these groups would be needed. It is also somewhat unclear how group 7, senses, relates to ideas. This list could be extended, and Khroustzi (2003) suggested a tenth class of ideas is cosmic ones. However, the list serves to illustrate how we can attempt to categorize the types of ideas that one would have to measure if we attempted to count ideas.

8.2 Figure 1

4. Multidisciplinary integrative project

The scientific literature to date that is relevant to the question of the extent of human mental diversity, comes from a variety of fields including psychology, sociology, ethics, and related behavioral subjects. The methodology used in disciplines of genetics, psychology, animal behaviour, sociology, history, public understanding of science, religious studies, to mention just a few, needs to be harvested to design an integrative approach to understand the extent of human ideas. While researchers in each field could make their own attempts to map ideas, an integrated approach would be useful, and I invite readers to join a global mental mapping project. The first task would be to reach consensus on how to group ideas and what methodologies would be useful.

The perceived complexity of the problem has been a barrier to a dedicated effort to understand the extent of human ideas. Studies on the genetic influence upon human behavior are still to reach the same degree of vigour that has been achieved for studies of complex physical disorders such as cancer, because of a neglect of scientific studies of human psychological disorders in the past century. As we have seen in the growing recognition of the importance in developing reliable scientific methods for study of common complex diseases, we can hope for the improvement of methodology to scientifically study the human mind. While we can learn many things from human behavior in pathological conditions, equal attention needs to be paid to the study of how the human mind normally works when faced with every day moral dilemmas.

There are already useful models based on the work in the public understanding of science and technology choices that may be a catalyst for entering the whole field of human idea mapping. Discourse analysis methods have been developed for analyzing oral and written discourse (Potter and Wetherell, 1987). Studies have included surveys and interviews with both fixed and open questions, with many being conducted on attitudes to science (Macer, 1992, 1994; Gaskell, et al. 1997). These studies led to separation of individuals based on their ideas as technophiles (loving technology), technophobes (fearful of technology) and doubters (not sure). This diversity of individual human response is found in all countries, even though the governments of countries may have opposing policies. At this societal level a government must decide a working policy to deal with issues that are controversial. Even within small regional distances, for example the European Union, human embryo research is illegal in Germany however it is legal in Belgium, and encouraged in the UK. In international society, scientists who have developed research on embryos to help us understand human development and to provide better services for assisted reproduction, are applauded with the prizes.

Some cross-cultural studies suggest idea diversity is above boundaries of culture, religion, age or other demographic factors. In the 1993 International Bioethics survey with 6000 persons in 10 countries in the Asia Pacific area, the survey results revealed that when faced with a diverse range of bioethics dilemmas, the ideas that respondents in different countries like New Zealand, India, Thailand and Japan gave were similar and finite in number (Macer, 1994). For most dilemmas the number of ideas was about 30 for a given dilemma. The majorities of persons chose between groups of 5 to 10 ideas, and most were independent of culture, religion, age, gender, or education.

A mental mapping project would endeavor to analyze the ideas human beings have, and the factors behind these different ideas. One way to understand the ideas and mental processing is to ask a person about the moral dilemmas they remember that they used in practice in the past. In this way we can map the ideas that led to a particular action as a response to a situation. A second is to ask hypothetical questions about cases and explore how persons think. A third is to observe the actions and words of the persons. Practice and theory can differ widely, and ideas might vary even in the same situation based on past experience. Would a project to make a human mental map be better to focus on descriptions of people's memories when describing the actions that already happened , or would it be better to discuss the reasoning for hypothetical situations that could be standardized between people and communities? These may be necessary complementary approaches.

The individual human mind is a societal creation, formed through a series of interactions with other persons. After an initial response to a dilemma, real or hypothetical, our mind generates an idea. That idea is subject to genetic, environmental and cultural factors as discussed above. Then the process of idea development occurs, subject to the cultural restraints and lessons of the past to that person. The action is taken, but this is not the end of the idea for a normal human mind. The consequences are considered, there may be guilt or self-gratification, through the interplay of the conscience and ego.

The call for a mental mapping project can be pitched at both individual and social levels. Sociology has considered societies, and psychology has considered individuals, or influences upon individuals. We should develop a mental mapping project to explore similarities between cultures and communities not just at individual human level, but also as members responding inside biological communities. Cross-cultural studies can inform this process also. However in the same way that the unit of evolution may be the individual, the unit of study of the human mind should describe individual diversity. No individual is an island separated by a vast ocean of distance to their neighbor, and relationships with other beings would be one of the key issues in describing the human mind, however, we may have more success as a scientific study to focus on the ideas of individual humans, and their relations.

In modern society the media plays a significant role in formulating people's ideas, so media studies have traced the way that people's thinking in different countries is converging. When it comes to new controversies like the use of modern biotechnology, over the past decade the proportion of people who ascribed their attitudes to television has significantly increased to become the major source, ahead of newspapers, personal experience, and discussions with others (Macer and Ng, 2000). There have also been interesting media accounts of the initial announcement of this project, for example calling it "Del genoma al 'ideoma'" (Jauregui, 2002).

5. Enhanced studies of cross cultural bioethics

There will be many implications of a mental mapping project. The idea that "I think therefore I am" from Descartes has led to the belief that the human mind is infinitely complex. It is reassuring for humans who claim to be on top of the process of evolution, whether through God's will or by chance. However, the time has come for us to scientifically measure if we really are finite or infinite. Even if a new idea can be generated by the human mind, most of the thinking of people appears to fall into the range of the finite.

There will also be ample opportunities for studies involving other animals as well (Macer, 2002b). The chimpanzee genome project should allow genetic understanding of the closest related species. One can imagine numerous experiments with transgenesis, though the ethical implications of what we already know about other great apes besides Homo sapiens suggests we should not harm these species in such research. Animal rights concerns make such research deserve even more stricter protection as we may well acknowledge implicitly the rationality of other animals. Our evolutionary identity will be clarified.

There are implications for cultural identity also. How should a culture that tries to maintain its cultural uniqueness by claiming everyone thinks the same, face up to the reality that in every culture the full range of idea diversity is found. This diversity is found in almost all groups, excluding those particularly finite groups that are formed to promote particular political aims, such as those who fight for or against abortion, or euthanasia.

The question of how universal the human idea map is, is of importance for the development of global society, when we're faced with dilemmas like should we have common guidelines to regulate the use of new biotechnology or assisted reproductive technology using cloning, for example. It is time to start thinking scientifically about it, whether or not science is finite or infinite. That is another question.

As discussed above, a mental map could be used to aid decision making that people have to make when faced with a moral dilemma. Although some may say that ignorance is bliss, human beings spend a lot of time in guilt, thinking that they could have made a better decision. These memories are important for helping us face moral dilemmas in the future. I would envisage a general 3 or 4 dimensional model for ideas (Mental map) is constructed as a total, and then onto this framework we then can map our own ideas, and rank them. This might help us make more reasoned moral choices. It is unknown how much people would follow this, but it may provide a useful addition to bioethics. Perhaps people will just follow the principle of love of life (Macer, 1998), but then this is an idea of high priority.

A home page for the mental map project has been established which includes a range of links <http://eubios.info/menmap.htm>. Updates will be placed on this homepage, together with a list of persons joining this project, and further updates will appear in future issues of EJAIB. There has been publication of a number of papers on the project that were presented at the TRT8 conference, and others. These reveal that we do already have the means to embark upon a human mental map with the goal of describing the diversity of ideas a human being makes in any given situation or dilemma. This is the behaviourome or human mental map. This is not a map of a physical structure but a map of ideas.

To compare mental maps allows comparisons of idea diversity between persons and species. This will allow the development of descriptive bioethics into a common framework for comparative ethics. This will aid in policy making to make policy that respects the diversity of people in a culture, and globally. This would help develop bioethics for the people by the people. The development of biotechnology and use of humans in clinical trials in many countries raises fundamental questions about whether the standards used should be universal or local. The development of guidelines should be culturally sensitive in the way ethical, social and legal aspects are considered. Having a map of human ideas will enable us to reflect more diversity of ideas into policy frameworks. We will have to pay attention to ensure it is used well, and not used to dictate majority views to minorities.

The mental map presented at TRT8 on the 15 February, 2003, was a 4 dimensional model including points which represent ideas on a matrix for all the types of ideas (9 colours (ideas) at present as in the first papers (Macer, 2002ab)) within a framework of six sides. The six sides are the ideals of self-love, love of others, loving good, loving life (Macer, 1998), with time - memories and hopes! I propose to add our heritage - memories and hopes to the four ideals in decision making! Memories include our biological, social and spiritual heritage seen in biology, medicine, society, religion, for example. Note that this model does not necessarily exclude beings that cannot think, as they still share a memory (history) and a future heritage. As I showed in Bioethics is Love of Life (Macer, 1998), the four ideals are pre-human in origin, i.e. they are seen in other beings that appeared in evolution before human beings.

Through the course of TRT8 discussion the mental map model, which was presented as shown in Figure 2 as a box with 1800 grid points sized 90cm x 90cm x 60cm, was unveiled (Akashi, 2003; Macer, 2003). There is no particular significance given to 1800, rather I expect that we will be working with a range of 10,000 ideas. The number of ideas depends on the arbitrary limits placed around the ideas. While a virtual map will be useful for communication, at present there is a physical model for the initial construction phases. While a box was made with six sides, we could imagine more sides, and with multiple dimensions other principles can be included.

8.2 Figure 2

Examples where shown of how a process of decision making (Figure 1) included linking ideas together and processing them to make choices. The current mental map is built with the intention to study all the ideas used when facing moral dilemmas, but there are other areas of the human mind that include ideas which will be explored for integrating into a mental map.

One example of an idea that was given was the desire for food, which is a biological necessity. One of the points that were made in discussion was that it is difficult to say that we can understand the idea of another being. This concern is incorporated into the mental map by the concept that the idea points would have spheres of uncertainty around them.

The start of the second phase of the project was in June 2003 when the listserve (Yahoo Groups/Behaviourome) was set up and about 100 persons have joined at the time of printing this book. The project is open to all who wish to contribute in an open spirit of academic multidisciplinary understanding, and those who wish to join up in the list serve are welcome. The next phase will be to assign and volunteer for tasks in the building of a mental map, noting that several models can be pursued to find the best for each particular purpose of use of mental mapping.

In conclusion we can see that the projects on bioethics education and mental mapping are two attempts to develop Asian and international bioethics in the twentieth century onto a more concrete and transdisciplinary basis. We need to develop a common language for studies of life and ideas, and it is hoped that these projects will allow this.

6. References (Most are on-line at Eubios Ethics Institute web site)

Akashi, Kim (2003). Mental mapping project kicks off in Japan, Lancet Neurology 2 (4), 206.
Asada, Y., Akiyama, S., Tsuzuki, M., Macer, N.Y. & Macer, D.R.J. (1996) "High school teaching of bioethics in New Zealand, Australia, and Japan", Journal of Moral Education 25, 401-420.
Asada, Y. & Macer, D.R.J. (1998) "High school bioethics education network in Japan", pp. 152-166 in Bioethics in Asia, N. Fujiki & D.R.J. Macer, eds. (Eubios Ethics Institute, 1998).
Bhardwaj, M. & Macer, D. (1999) "A comparison of bioethics in school textbooks in India and Japan", Eubios Journal of Asian and International Bioethics 9: 56-9.
Dawkins, R. The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press, 1976.
Enard, W. et al. Molecular evolution of FOXP2, a gene involved in speech and language. Nature 418, 869-72, 2002.
Gaskell, et al. (Biotechnology and the European Public Concerted Action Group.) Europe ambivalent on biotechnology. Nature 387, 845-7, 1997.
Jauregui, P. Del genoma al 'ideoma'. El Mundo (14 Nov. 2002), 30; also Wired Magazine (November, 2002).
Khroutski, KS. Integrative Mental Mapping Project Under the 'EDM' Processing: The Thesis - Konstantin S. Khroutski , Eubios Journal of Asian and International Bioethics 13 (2003), 93-7.
Macer, D. & Ng, MAC. Changing attitudes to biotechnology in Japan. Nature Biotechnology 18, 945-7, 2000.
Macer, Darryl (1992) "The far east of biological ethics", Nature 359, 770.
Macer, Darryl R.J., Bioethics for the People by the People (Christchurch: Eubios Ethics Institute, 1994).
Macer, D.R.J., Asada, Y., Tsuzuki, M., Akiyama, S., & Macer, N.Y. Bioethics in high schools in Australia, New Zealand and Japan, (Christchurch: Eubios Ethics Institute, 1996).
Macer, D. & Chin Choon Ong, C.C. (1999) "Bioethics education among Singapore high school science teachers", Eubios Journal of Asian and International Bioethics 9: 138-144
Macer, D. & Ng, MC. (2000) "Changing attitudes to biotechnology in Japan", Nature Biotechnology 18: 945-7.
Macer, DRJ. The next challenge is to map the human mind. Nature 420, 121, 2002.
Macer, DRJ. Finite or Infinite Mind?: A Proposal for an Integrative Mental Mapping Project, Eubios Journal of Asian and International Bioethics 12 (2002), 203-6.
Maekawa, F. & Macer, D. (2001) "Interactive bioethics in a focus group on life and biotechnology in Japan", Law and the Human Genome Review 15: 173-201.
Pandian, C. & Macer, DRJ. "An Investigation in Tamil Nadu with Comparisons to Australia, Japan and New Zealand", pp 390-400 in Azariah J., Azariah H., & Macer DRJ., eds., Bioethics in India (Eubios Ethics Institute 1998).
Potter, J. and Wetherell,M. Discourse and Social Psychology. London: Sage, 1987.

Comments in Press and papers are at the web site. Also:
The Behaviorome Mental Map Project - Darryl Macer, The Scientist 17 (21 April, 2003), 19.
Nature (14 November, 2002; introduction to this week's issue)
Wired magazine (25 November 2002)
El Medico
Discover magazine (March 2003; p. 12)
Popular Science (USA), description of the behaviourome

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