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Ethics in Research: Protecting Participants' Rights and Welfare

Ethics in Research: Protecting Participants' Rights and Welfare

A Confucian Perspective on Public Health Ethics.

Kathryn Muyskens¹, Angus Dawson¹

¹Centre for Biomedical Ethics, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore.

|January 19, 2026

Summary

Public health ethics often prioritizes Western liberal values like autonomy. Exploring Confucianism offers a relational perspective, critiquing these assumptions and broadening ethical considerations for public health policy.

Keywords:

bioethics comparative philosophy confucianism individualism public health ethics

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Area of Science:

Bioethics
Public Health
Moral Philosophy

Background:

Contemporary public health ethics predominantly follows Western liberal assumptions.
These assumptions include prioritizing liberty and autonomy, individualistic social ontology, personal responsibility, and consent-based obligations.
This framework often marginalizes social, cultural, and religious contexts.

Purpose of the Study:

To examine public health ethics from a non-Western moral tradition.
To explore how Confucianism can offer a critical perspective on current public health ethics.
To challenge the universality of Western liberal assumptions in ethics.

Main Methods:

Outlining key tenets of Confucianism.
Applying a Confucian ethical framework to analyze public health issues.
Comparative analysis of Western liberal and Confucian ethical approaches.

Main Results:

Confucianism presents a relational view of social ontology and shared well-being.
It offers different perspectives on obligations, agency, and responsibility.
This approach critiques the individualistic and autonomy-focused nature of Western liberalism.

Conclusions:

Western liberal assumptions in public health ethics are not universal truths but require justification.
A Confucian perspective can serve as an epistemic critique, highlighting the need to defend core assumptions.
Incorporating Confucian insights can broaden the values informing public health policy and promote a more inclusive ethical discourse.