Ren-Zong Qiu
Program in Bioethics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing,
China
Pediatricians are faced with ethical dilemmas especially when they
treat infants with serious mental and physical disabilities and need to make
decisions whether life-sustaining intervention should be used. There are three
major issues - the first one is the moral status of those infants; the second
is how to balance different values; and the third is who and how to make decision,
a procedural issue. Pediatricians have triple commitments: to the infant, to
the family, to society, it makes them further get into dilemmas.
Medical ethics in China developed in a unique cultural context.
Medicine is assumed as the art of ren, humaneness. A relational concept of
personhood has developed by Confucians. Medical decision is normally made by
the family, but not by the individual. However, with the economic boom and
deepening of reform and widening of openness, the priority of moral values is
put more and more to the respect for the person and her/his autonomy. The
tradition and new development both affected the way how to resolve the ethical
dilemmas facing pediatricians in China. Whether economic factors should affect
the decision-making on treatment of infants with serious mental and physical
disabilities will be also considered.