Olga Nagornykh, Natalia Shock
ISTORIYA. – 2022. – V. 13. – Issue 6 (116).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.18254/S207987840021761-6
The article analyzes the formation and development of the concept of bioethics in the historical
context of the Chinese and Soviet reality. The reasons for slow reception of bioethics in the Soviet
and Chinese medical communities are considered. Separately, the phenomenon of Confucian
bioethics is investigated in the context of its perception in the practice of medicine in China. The
basis of the historiographical discourse of the article is a set of works by foreign researchers
investigating the problems of bioethics and its adaptation in China, as well as a body of sources
related to the development of the Christian discourse of bioethics and the peculiarities of its
development in the practice of Russian medicine. The article notes that the American professor H.
T. Engelhardt, the author of the concept of Orthodox bioethics, collaborated actively with Chinese
researchers engaged in the Confucian tradition of understanding the ethics of medicine. The authors
compare the cultural, historical, political, ideological features of the Soviet and Chinese reality
aiming to explain the difficulties of evolution and subsequent reception of the concept of bioethics.
