Editorial - Tsukuba Bioethics Roundtable

Eubios Journal of Asian and International Bioethics 6 (1996), 153.

From the 20-22 October, 1996, the Second International Tsukuba Bioethics Roundtable was held, as part of the activities of the Asian Bioethics Network and hosted by the Eubios Ethics Institute, at the University of Tsukuba. This second roundtable follows up on the First International Tsukuba Bioethics Roundtable held 12-18 November, 1993 (see Bioethics for the People by the People, p. 39). The third one is planned for next October, in Tsukuba, as advertised on the following page. Next year we will also be hosting the Japan Association of Bioethics Annual Meeting here and have a joint session. This year, that meeting followed the Tsukuba meeting by a day but was in Tokyo (as in 1993), and Frank Leavitt, Jayapaul Azariah and myself gave papers there.

The participants included Akira Akabayashi, Yukiko Asada, Atsushi Asai, Jayapaul Azariah, Martin Hajduch, Katsuko Kamiya, Katsumata, Simon Lawson, Frank Leavitt, Darryl Macer, Masahiro Morioka, Keisuke Nagase, Miyako Okada-Takagi, Hyakudai Sakamoto, Humitake Seki, Shinryo Shinagawa, Shin'ichi Shoji, Noritoshi Tanida, Yutaka Tejima, Miho Tsuzuki, Kohji Yamada, Kyoko Yokoyama, and some staff and research students who came in occasionally. Many contributions are in this issue (contents on the left of this editorial), and further papers will follow in the next issue from those who are not included this time. Only 7 were common to the First roundtable, but we hope to welcome most of this years group and many new faces to Tsukuba next year.

There was much fruitful free discussion and a conclusion of the discussions from both roundtables will be one of the items included in the next issue. This issue is packed with papers on a range of topics around the issue of bioethics in Asia, and we encourage more to write. We also invite your comments if you think this journal should more formally separate letters from papers?

The next issue should be published in early January, before a planned trip to India, to hold bioethics workshops organized by Jayapaul Azariah (see conference list) in Madras, Banglalore, and Cochin. These will immediately follow one in Ahmedabad. All readers are invited if you can make it to all of these meetings! The human side of the network building is one of the most rewarding, though so is the output in papers that have come to my desk. We encourage more, and we hope you can all renew your support for this endeavour and EJAIB in 1997.

Seasons greetings...

- Darryl Macer

Go back to EJAIB November 1996
Go back to EJAIB
The Eubios Ethics Institute is on the world wide web of Internet:
http://eubios.info/index.html