Abstract

In 1927, Fritz Jahr coined the term “bioethics” to indicate an “environmental ethics based on biopsychics”. In 1970, Van Rensselaer Potter also coined the term “bioethics” to indicate a “new global ethics based on biology”. As the same Potter wrote, after 1971 “in the USA there was an immediate explosion of the use of the word bioethics” but with a completely different meaning which became dominant and spread worldwide. He went on to say, “their [the public's] image of bioethics delayed the [global] emergence of what now exists”. Elsewhere I have analyzed how this happened, here I analyze why.