“換頭術”的迷思: 儒家生命倫理學的視角

The Myth of Head Transplant Surgery: From a Confucian Bioethical Perspective

Abstract

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.

異體頭身重建手術已被提上臨床醫學議程，引起了倫理學和醫學界的廣泛關注。從儒家生命倫理的角度探討“換頭術”，能夠避免陷入西方傳統對弗蘭肯斯坦式“造人”的本能厭惡，也能夠提供不同於技術理性和個人主義的儒家視角。在“生生原則”的導引下，以對人類生命的尊重為第一原則，將身心看作交互關聯的整體，將自我放在家族血脈的代際傳遞中考量個體選擇，是儒家生命倫理學對“換頭術”引發的倫理爭議所作出的可能回應。

Head transplant surgery has aroused extensive concerns in the field of biomedical ethics since it was put on the clinical medicine agenda a few years ago. This paper shows that analyzing the ethical controversy over head transplant surgery from the perspective of Confucianism not only helps to avoid the intuitive disgust at “Frankenstein” medical action from a Western tradition, but also provides an innovative perspective different from the instrumentalist rationality and individualism that prevails in Western thought. Under the guidance of the Confucian Principle of Life, people must respect the lives of others and should regard the body and mind as comprising an integrated life. From the Confucian viewpoint, the self is part of the transmission of family generations, which means that one should consider the place the self in one’s family network when making ethical decisions. As stated previously, these cultural and intellectual Confucian views constitute a useful framework through which Confucian bioethics can respond to the ethical controversy generated by head transplant surgery.

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