A comparative Study of Christian and Igbo Medical Ethics Perspectives

The place of ethics in medical practice has being one of outstanding importance. Each medicine be it western medicine, African, Chinese or Egyptian medicines had from their inceptions taken care of some ethical issues arising from the medical profession of their time based on their cultural and moral values. However at present, the world is becoming a global village such that the human health issues are becoming of global concern. Again the better anthropological knowledge and health sciences also reveal the universal or common human nature. This is to say that man as the object of medicine has universal nature. A medical practitioner trained in Germany can offer his or her services to a Nigerian patient as well as an American patient; these patients can also be treated by a Kenyan medical practitioner. From the foregoing, it becomes unavoidably imperative to work towards a common morality in the medical profession and the surer way as the first step is a comparative study of different medical ethics perspectives and that is what this project sets out to do. Our choice of Igbo medical ethics perspective and Christian ethics perspective was formed by the natures of these two cultural and religious societies; the Igbo society coming from a very different world view with particular beliefs, moral and cultural values, while Christianity is a religion that meets every other society and cultures. This choice therefore offers us the opportunity to accommodate the reality of globalization; to observe two distinct world views from different cultural background since Christianity originated within a western culture while Igbo society stands best to represent a black man's cultural and religious world views. If these two religious, moral and cultural values could to an extent agree in area of medical ethics, the hope of achieving a universal medical ethics will be strengthened. von Ani Nnamdi, Stephen