2018, Vol.19, No.2

Journal of the Korea Bioethics Association 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.55

pISSN : 1598-0324
https://journal.kci.go.kr/kba

Bioethics in East Asian countries(China, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea) began in late 1970s or early 1980s. It was influenced by the change of the society and healthcare system, the development of medical technology such as organ transplantation, and the uprising of advanced biotechnology. Though each country has different political and societal legislation, healthcare system and culture, technological field which is energetically sought for, and disputable ethical issues, they have some difficult problems and questions in common ; the conflict between the imported theories and the real field of healthcare and research, the split between the language of ethics and the real practice of ethics, and the coexist of the pre-modernity and the current modernity in its society. Bioethics should be a foundation of ethical practice in the real world. The experiences and current situation of these countries, who share the similar background, and a comparative study would some important implication to the right practice and the development of bioethics in Korea.

Positive recognition and determination of organ donation by donor family members are crucial for the activation of organ donation in Korea. This study aims to analyze the communication attitude of the organ transplant coordinator and the counseling ability to determine the donation decision of the brain donor family. In particular, it is important to understand the psychological burden of organ transplant coordinators, who face with the family suffering from the loss of their family member, and to know how they can relieve this burden in the process of communication and experience of constructing trust with them. As a result, this study provides important basic data for better communicating with the brain-dead family, and also suggests the institutional improvement plans for activation of brain-death donation.

Precision medicine is a new paradigm of medical service based on various mass personal information often including human material. However, the development of big data brings about some worries on protection of personal private information as well as realization of precision medicine. Collecting personal private information follows the practice of obtaining informed consent. But some who use such information intend to collect it through the waiver of informed consent or without consent appealing to the concept that de-identified personal information is not personal private information. I raised a question of whether research on precision medicine can be carried out through the waiver of consent when we consider characteristics of information it pursues. I argue that the technology of big data makes us reconsider the concept that de-identified personal information is not personal private information. With the consideration of domestic acts, American regulations, and EU regulation, I argue that those current regulations on the waiver of informed consent and the concept of de-identification will be applied to particular cases with the consideration of the purpose of using personal information and the features of combined additional information, that de-identification is not enough to protect privacy in the era of big date because even anonymised personal information may become identifiable, and that we need the system to monitor the flow and management of information. In addition, we need to reconsider a research paradigm such as donation in obtaining personal information because information in itself is a material for commercialization in precision medicine.