With the advance of biomedicine, certain individuals and groups are
vulnerable because of their incapacities to defend themselves. The
International Bioethics Committee as a UNESCO working group has for the
last several years dedicated to deepen this principle of human
vulnerability and personal integrity. This book serves to supplement
this effort with a religious perspective given a great number of the
world's population is affiliated with some religious traditions. While
there is diversity within each of these traditions, all of them carry in
them the mission to protect the weak, the underprivileged, and the poor.
Thus, here presented is a collection of papers written by bioethics
experts from six major world religions--Buddhism, Christianity,
Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism--who were gathered to discuss
the meaning and implications of the principle of vulnerability in their
respective traditions.