Lock M
Department of Social Studies of Medicine, McGill University.
Med Anthropol Q. 1996 Dec;10(4):575-600. doi: 10.1525/maq.1996.10.4.02a00110.
This article demonstrates how debate about technologically manipulated death is elaborated in radically different forms in the scientifically sophisticated spaces of Japan and North America. Using recent historical materials and contemporary medical, philosophical, and media publications, I argue that the institutionalization and legitimization of "brain death" as the end of life in North America have been justified by a dominant discourse in which it is asserted that if certain measurable criteria are fulfilled, an individual can be declared scientifically dead. In Japan, by contrast, death is interpreted primarily as a social and not an individual event, and efforts to scientifically define the end of life as a measurable point in time are rejected outright by the majority, including many clinicians. The margins between nature and culture are debated in both cultural spaces, but assigned different moral status in the respective dominant discourse.
本文展示了在日本和北美科学成熟的领域中，关于技术操控死亡的辩论是如何以截然不同的形式展开的。通过使用近期的历史资料以及当代医学、哲学和媒体出版物，我认为在北美，“脑死亡”作为生命终结的制度化和合法化是由一种主导话语所证明的，这种话语声称，如果满足某些可测量的标准，一个人就可以被科学地宣布死亡。相比之下，在日本，死亡主要被解释为一种社会事件而非个人事件，将生命终结科学地定义为一个可测量的时间点的努力遭到了包括许多临床医生在内的大多数人的断然拒绝。在这两种文化领域中，自然与文化之间的界限都存在争议，但在各自的主导话语中被赋予了不同的道德地位。
