Pellegrino Edmund D
Camb Q Healthc Ethics. 1992 Summer;1(3):191-6. doi: 10.1017/s0963180100000360.
... What emerges from the intersection of systems of medical ethics across cultural lines is a recognition of the need for and the possibility of some form of metacultural ethic that can ameliorate cultural relativism. In medical ethics, all ethical positions are not of equal moral status -- regardless of how tightly bound they may be to a particular culture; for example, consider the nearly universal approbation for cooperative efforts of physicians who oppose the use of nuclear weapons and the condemnation of physicians who torture or experiment with prisoners of war. Even if violations of patient rights are tolerated in certain social and cultural settings, they are not tolerable in any common ethic of medicine. Growing recognition of the moral rights of patients, their special vulnerability as sick persons, and their dependency on the physician's knowledge constitute the empirical foundation of a morally defensible ethic of medicine. Those cultural systems that violate such norms cannot be given equal moral standing with systems that respect these norms, not because the cultural systems that support human and patients' rights are per se superior but because the protection of human rights is grounded in something more fundamental than culture -- the deference owed to all human beings qua human beings. This is a norm by which every culture may be judged....
跨越文化界限的医学伦理体系交叉所产生的是一种认识，即需要某种形式的元文化伦理，并且这种伦理是有可能改善文化相对主义的。在医学伦理中，所有伦理立场的道德地位并不平等——无论它们与特定文化的联系有多紧密；例如，想想人们对反对使用核武器的医生合作努力几乎普遍的认可，以及对折磨或对战俘进行实验的医生的谴责。即使在某些社会和文化背景下侵犯患者权利的行为被容忍，但在任何普遍的医学伦理中都是不可容忍的。对患者道德权利的日益认识、他们作为病人的特殊脆弱性以及他们对医生知识的依赖，构成了一种在道德上站得住脚的医学伦理的经验基础。那些违反此类规范的文化体系，不能与尊重这些规范的体系享有同等的道德地位，不是因为支持人权和患者权利的文化体系本身更优越，而是因为人权保护基于比文化更根本的东西——对所有人作为人的尊重。这是一个可以据此评判每种文化的规范……
