English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Cultural differences are real and arresting. They are noted, discussed and debated in bioethics, as in contemporary social and political life in general. But cultural differences can be very tricky to interpret. Their factual status, moral meanings and political implications are rarely, if ever, as straightforward as they appear. Cultural differences can be seriously misconceived, misinterpreted, misrepresented and misused in various ways. Empirically problematic perceptions, ethically dubious judgments, and practically contentious resolutions can easily become entangled when considering matters of cultural difference. Many works on cross-cultural bioethics have often merely served to reinforce deeply rooted stereotypes and myths regarding both Western and non-Western cultures, especially the latter. A glaring example of such confusion is the appeal to perceived cultural differences as an ethical justification for rejecting those norms perceived as originating in the West and strongly advocated there – such as truth-telling by medical professionals, informed consent, patients’ rights, women’s rights and human rights in general. It is argued and widely held in certain circles that such practices and values are irrelevant and inapplicable to non-Western societies and cultures. In this paper, I will critically examine “the cultural differences” argument as it has been formulated against medical truth-telling in the Chinese context. I will demonstrate that, despite its popularity and apparent plausibility, the argument is seriously flawed both descriptively and normatively. Elsewhere, through comparisons between China and the West and supported by extensive primary Chinese materials, I have shown that direct disclosure is far from culturally alien to China and that, on the contrary, there was once a long, though forgotten, tradition of medical truth-telling in China (Nie 2011: Chapter 6). Here, I argue that, even if medical truth-telling were culturally alien to China, as usually assumed, ethical imperatives exist to reform the contemporary mainstream Chinese practice of nondisclosure or indirect disclosure through family members. Moreover, I will offer a Confucian defence of truth-telling as a fundamental ethical principle and a cardinal personal and social virtue which physicians would do well to take seriously. In the process, I expose some common intellectual barriers to cross-cultural understanding: dichotomizing different

The “Cultural Differences” Argument and Its Misconceptions: The Return of Medical Truth-Telling in China