- 著者
-
本田 勝紀
- 出版者
- 日本医学哲学・倫理学会
- 雑誌
- 医学哲学 医学倫理 (ISSN:02896427)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.17, pp.144-155, 1999-10-01 (Released:2018-02-01)
Some cases of "brain death"-heart transplantetion in Japan have been performed in 1999 after a long- period of time following the Wada scandal of 1967. The problems of whether "brain death" is the termination of human life or not have not been solved medically, socially or ethically, even though the new organ transplantation law, including the description-a brain-dead body, was enforced during a brief discussion in 1997. The main reason was that the authorized Takeuchi criteria of the Ministry and Welfare in 1985, and 1997 together, stated that brain death is not a concept on death, but a clinical concept on statistical study on brain-death cases of our country. So, the "brain-dead" person in transplantation is the weaker patient compared with the recipient patient. In 1996, Professor Abe was arrested for the accidental homocide of a hemophilia patient injected with non-heated blood. The patient later died of AIDS after the injections. Professor Abe routinely carried out these types of injections till the middle of 1985 through a subordinate doctor of Teikyo University. I think that Professor Abe is the weakest person compared with the AIDS patient, who was supported by patients groups, lawyers, public prosecuters and the mass media. Being a specialist on blood medicine, he could know the risk of blood from the USA possibly comtaminated with AIDS, reading the some new English articles 10 years ago, but he never discontinued the use of the blood therapy. The reason was that at that time, there was no consensus on the non-heated blood for hemophilia as the origin of "AIDS", medically (no strong arguments on the blood were done for the origin of the AIDS in the blood group meeting, and so strong debate was done on the strict relation between the serological findings and fatal signs of AIDS patient in the infection group meeting), socially, and legally. And secondly blood therapy was the only routine method to treat the bleeding of hemophilia. Thirdly this legal and fanatic investigation against Prof. Abe was performed 10 years after the injection based on long years of medical data. He is the victim of irrationalism and fascism in the medical society including both doctors and patients of our country, because in Europe and American countries where the more strict discussions on the relation between the blood use and AIDS signs have been continued these 10 years medically, socially and legally, no arrest of the clinical doctors has been found in the investigation till now.