Kidney Transplantation and the Killer Rabbit

81 K i d n e y Tr a n s p l a n t a t i o n a n d t h e K i l l e r R a b b i t Vo o Te c k C h u a n Kidney Transplantation and the Killer Rabbit I participated in the World Congress Bioethics, which was held recently in the city of Rijeka, Croatia. Staying at a nice hotel, I savoured good food (notwithstanding the fact that I ordered truffles for dessert, and was served with mushrooms instead), and met brilliant people with perspectives wider and deeper than the Adriatic Sea. I thought to myself — isn’t this wonderful? Isn’t this what academic life is all about? Am I not in the thick of the action, sharing my viewpoint on personhood as a relational notion from the Confucian perspective, and inquiring into the metaphor of the killer rabbit in Monty Python’s Spamalot with those who did not excuse themselves within 2 to 5 minutes of meeting me (which is incidentally the medically recommended duration for pronouncement of cardiac death)? The former with an audience concerned with how best we should care for those with dementia, the latter with those who are rather demented themselves. There is synergy between both discussions in case you have not noticed. To my circle of friends who never saw the point of academic aspirations beyond job certification, this sounds very idle. I sometimes defend myself by claiming that as a part-time PhD student in Philosophy who aims to have a university career in bioethics, sharing my views through the written word is a necessary journey that I should sooner begin than later, and conference presentation is a useful avenue for seeing whether a paper and its ideas can withstand the scrutiny of experts, including editorial members of journals and medical professionals embroiled in realities that philosophers can only (but should never) speculate about. Get published or die trying. (This is hip-hop band 50 Cent’s version of the adage “Publish or Perish”.) The real reason though is my belief and experience that, to quote the Chinese thinker Lin Yutang (林语堂), “those who are wise won’t be busy and those who are too busy can’t be wise.” Time away from the tempo of work and the relentless torrent of emails allows me, paradoxically, to become productive. Knowledge is a process and consequence of play, and does S T U D E N T V O I C E S Asian Bioethics Review December 2008 inaugural edition 81–85 A s i a n B i o e t h i c s R e v i e w D e c e m b e r 2 0 0 8 i n a u g u r a l e d i t i o n 82 not run on a schedule. So the Philosophical Mind, as a product of unhurried, quiet reflection on accumulated wisdom, thought and arguments (both East and West) concerning the human condition, accords well with serving the cause of bioethics, which is to contribute to decision and policy-making for clinical practice and biotechnology application that aim at the good. Defining the good (which certainly should not be equated with the libertarian–utilitarian ideal in every context) is challenging enough. In many matters of ethics, we can and should strive to be less expedient, less efficient, less caught in the heat of the situation that makes it hard to do mental “house-cleaning”. And often, the resolution of dilemmas goes beyond the simple application of the four principles — autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence and justice — despite much respect that they deserve. To limit ethics to such an algorithm of thinking is idleness indeed. Imbued with a certain spirit of leisure, particularly in a place of charm like Rijeka, a conference is also a time and opportunity for one to have conversations (as opposed to talks and meetings), to share trivialities like how many people doze off during one’s presentation and what technique they use to disguise it, and matters of gravity like where to get a good drink (this...