Pre-natal screening and other developments in reproductive technology can help avoid the transmission of serious genetic diseases, while also offering greater reproductive freedom to women. However, it also raises questions over the fetus' right to life. (courtesy of Shih Chin-tzu)

Everyone should be able to enjoy medical care. It is a basic human right. Yet is it possible both to push for medical progress and to respect human rights? The question is getting harder and harder to answer.

From SARS prevention measures, reproductive technologies and prenatal screening and testing, to notification about medical conditions, near-death resuscitation, clinical trials and biological databases, a growing number of medical issues involving human rights have cropped up in recent years amid constant global change. Some of these controversies stem from using people as stepping stones for medical progress; others are connected to dilemmas and struggles that have occurred in the wake of advancing medical technology; and still others hinge on conflicts between the greater social good and individual rights. Pitfalls are impossible to avoid. These difficult issues have reached a critical point where they can no longer be ignored and deserve everyone's attention.

"In my father's era, before the use of antibiotics, general anesthetics, or surgical gloves, doctors could be described as being in a constant bloody struggle to save the lives of pregnant women and babies." In his book The Ivory Tower: Sixty Letters to a Medical Student, Hsieh Fon-jou, a professor at National Taiwan University's College of Medicine, thus recalled the insufficiencies of medical resources and care during an earlier era of medicine in Taiwan. (His father began working as an obstetrician in the 1940s). "In his mind the concept of 'ethics' didn't exist. He simply based his actions on the idea that doctors ought to save lives." The doctor-patient relationship back then was much simpler and more relaxed than it is now.

But the good old days aren't coming back. Medical technology has been steadily advancing. It now not only provides treatments for illnesses, but has even, in some cases, allowed man to become master of his own fate and declare war on all kinds of "incurable" diseases. But at the same time there is growing consciousness about human rights, so that the ill are no longer powerless beings and doctors are no longer given carte blanche to make medical decisions and perform research as they see fit. Increasingly the doctor-patient relationship is one where the two parties are at each other's throats, as medical progress and human rights seem to be at loggerheads.