Editorial: Bioethics Meetings
- Darryl Macer
Institute of Biological Sciences, University of Tsukuba,
Tsukuba Science City 305-8572, Japan
Email: asianbioethics@yahoo.co.nz
Eubios Journal of Asian and International Bioethics 10 (2000), 173.
Since the September issue I have attended three major international bioethics meetings that make some interesting comparisons. In September in London the Fifth World Congress of the International Association of Bioethics (IAB5) was held, which featured hundreds of papers and up to a dozen sessions at the same time. Although the conference had participants from over 50 countries, the proportion from Asia and other developing countries of the world was very small, especially when compared to the Fourth World Congress of Bioethics held in Tsukuba and Tokyo which allowed more participants from Asia. The Sixth World Congress will be in Brasilia in 2002, and will no doubt feature more participants and more from the region. The problem is the number of sessions means too much is missed.
In October I hosted the Sixth International Tsukuba Bioethics Roundtable (TRT6), the Bioethics, Health and Environment: Public in Policy in Tokyo, and then we had the 7th International Bioethics Seminar in Fukui. At TRT66 we had 50 foreign participants from 24 countries, featuring more Asian participants than at IAB5. The type of discussion when not dominated by Europeans and Americans is different to that found in so-called Northern countries, even though Japan is in that club. These meetings over 8 days were all in plenary session, allowing more interactive bioethics to grow between participants.
In November I attended the 6th session of UNESCO International Bioethics Committee (IBC) in Equador. It had a more formal atmosphere, and some sessions held out of public view as has become a fashion for the IBC. I have attended all IBC meetings, and they are useful meetings and attempts to move UN wheels towards bioethics action.
These three styles of meetings are all part of the global process of interactive bioethics that we need in the development of the human mind _€ as a social construct of all our minds interacting. I prefer the less bigger meetings when everyone has time to say hello and develop some love towards fellow participants, rather than seeing hundreds of anonymous faces. Let us hope that people will realize that we really change when our hearts interact with each other in a forum and develop bioethics together. The papers that people read are just part of that process.
This issue includes a few papers left from TRT5 in 1999, and we can expect the papers from TRT6 as well as new submitted papers, and papers from the pipeline of peer review to appear in the pages to come. EJAIB is an international journal, not limited by the term Asia, so do join in the debate we can have here and we hope that people will renewal subscriptions to help support the family of bioethics we have attempted to grow. -
- Darryl Macer
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