2016, Vol.19, No.3

Korean Journal of Medical Ethics 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 1.21

pISSN : 2005-8284 / eISSN : 2234-3598
https://journal.kci.go.kr/medethics

While the principle of autonomy is widely regarded as a fundamental principle of biomedical ethics, it is not completely clear how that principle should be understood. The purpose of this article is to identify a reasonable concept of autonomy within the context of contemporary neo-liberalist individualism. Neoliberalism developed out of the liberal tradition that emphasizes individual rights and freedoms. However, the concept of autonomy at the root of this rights-based view has been transformed through the quantitative expansion of, and qualitative changes to, individualism. In this article I discuss and reconsider the meaning of autonomy in terms of “an individual” as reflected in the spirit of neo-liberal individualism. I argue that while competition and accumulation are thought to be virtues of contemporary life, liberty should be understood, not in terms of liberty from interference, but rather in terms of liberty from the severe inequalities caused by the dominant social relations. This notion of liberty as non-domination is central to a more robust and meaningful principle of autonomy.

This article explores the biomedical ethics education module that is used in the UNESCO Bioethics Core Curriculum. Many universities across several countries have not yet incorporated bioethics into their curriculums. We believe that introducing UNESCO Bioethics Core Curriculum Casebook Series in universities will provide an incentive to include such a module in study programs, thus offering a strong foundation for the teaching and learning of biomedical ethics. In this article, the authors describe how they introduced teachers and students to the UNESCO-Bioethics Core Curriculum, based on the 2005 Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights and then examined the model of biomedical ethics education provided in the UNESCO Bioethics Core Curriculum Casebook Series. As per the curriculum, the authors suggest that the teaching module should include the following four elements: objectives, content, methods, and evaluation.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship of biomedical ethics awareness, self-esteem, family strengths between non-nursing college students and nursing college students. The participants were 345 students in South Korea. The statistical analyzed include descriptive statistic of the respondents’ general characteristics, an the data were analyzed with a t-test and a correlation using the SPSS WIN 20.0 program. The average score of nursing college students for biomedical ethics awareness was 2.89±.20 (using a 4-point Likert scale) and the average score of non-nursing college students was 2.87±.23. Nursing college students and non-nursing college of biomedical ethics awareness in the artificial insemination of factors appeared to have meaningful difference (t=2.64, p<.001). Biomedical ethics awareness showed a positive correlation with self-esteem(r=.212, p<.001). And right to life of fetus of biomedical ethics awareness showed a positive correlation with family strengths. The results of this study suggest that biomedical ethics education should need for general college students.