On May 18, 2001, the Korean Bioethics Advisory Commission, sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology, published a set of recommendations for biotechnological research and application, including scientific experiments with human embryos. Four days later, the KBAC held a public hearing to finalize its recommendations. Since then, public reaction and debate over the ethical aspects of human embryo research have actively surfaced. Most leaders of religious organizations, especially Catholic churches, objected to any type of embryo research. On the other (...) hand, some leaders of the scientific community supported freer scientific research on human embryos. (shrink)

This article reports and analyses a ‘wrongful life’ lawsuit brought against a genetic counsellor who failed to refer a woman for prenatal genetic testing despite her pleas to do so; this resulted in the wrongful birth of a child with a genetic abnormality. As a result of negligence, the mother did not have a termination and the baby was born. This is an event that reveals the troublesome nature of prenatal genetic testing applications in medical practice in Korea. The case (...) presentation and critique illuminates how genetic research and its applications in practice influence human life and society. The central issues involved in the lawsuit are the discrepancies between present practice and the law, and lack of respect for the client’s request to make self-determined reproductive choices. The lawsuit is explored in terms of the ethical grounds for the court’s ruling, the responsibility of the genetic counsellor, the sociocultural impact of genetic testing in Korean society, and people’s ability to make informed choices about how this technology is applied in medical practice. (shrink)

The purposes of this study were to investigate the ethical aspects of induced abortion from the viewpoint of Korean women, and to compare and contrast their ethical considerations and values with the views of western ethical scholars. The two extremes of ethical arguments about induced abortion are pro-life and pro-choice. However, the Korean women who participated in this study showed that conflicting ethical values were raised between the principle of caring and the sanctity of life or the principle of respect (...) for the person, not between the right of self-determination and the sanctity of life. The results of the study suggest that it would be better to include the viewpoints of women in any ethical discussion on abortion in order for ethicists and health professionals to understand more fully the dimensions of moral clinical problems and be in a better position to discuss them in a practical manner. (shrink)