When Van Rensselaer Potter coined the English word “bioethics”, he envisioned a field that would bring together biological understanding and ethical values to address global environmental problems. Following Potter’s broad vision of bioethics, I explore ethical ideas that we need to address climate change. However, I develop and emphasize ideas about justice and responsibility in ways that Potter did not. At key points, I contrast the ideas that I develop with those in Potter’s work, but (...) I try to avoid scholarly debates and stay focused on the practical task: developing ideas to help us address climate change. To begin, I describe the problem of climate change. Then I show how it raises deep and serious issues of justice. Since the issues of justice are relatively clear and compelling, I proceed to focus attention on issues of responsibility – on why and how to respond to the structural injustices of climate change. I also note how my emphasis on justice and responsibility raises two new issues. To conclude, I mention the role of ecological citizens in bringing about social change. (shrink)

Van Rensselaer Potter was the first voice to utter the word “bioethics,” yet he is too little appreciated by the bioethics community. My expectations for my first visit with Professor Van Rensselaer Potter were primed by conversations with leaders and historians of the field of biomedical ethics, including Warren Reich, Al Jonsen, and David Thomasma. When mentioning my interest in environmental ethics and my concerns for the current state of biomedical ethics, I was told that I (...) must meet Van. On my first visit to Madison, Wisconsin, Van met me at the McArdle Laboratories for Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin, where he spent essentially his entire academic career as a basic oncological researcher. He was dressed informally and driving a rusting1984 Subaru station wagon with a license plate that read YES ZPG. We spent this first portion of our visit at the Institute where he is an Emeritus Professor and has contributed to understanding cancer metabolism as recognized by his election to the National Academy of Sciences. However, Van felt most at home in his shack located outside Madison. This country retreat included a rather primitive hut surrounded by acres of property owned by the family. I felt at the heart of Van's world when I sat in one of a pair of inexpensive plastic outdoor chairs in a particularly secluded part of the woods on the property, the place where Van himself communed with nature. (shrink)

I first met Van Potter nearly 40 years ago when I was 17 and entering the University of Wisconsin as a new freshman. During the summer of 1963, Van was a participant in a series of evening seminars designed to familiarize premed students to the community at the University of Wisconsin Medical School. I was immediately struck by Van's unique ability to cut straight to the core of virtually any issue having to do with biomedicine. As with many of (...) his students, I quickly found myself in a father-son relationship of both our making. Van has been a source of inspiration and guidance to me ever since. (shrink)

Mindful of how the history of bioethics has often been presented, we explore the background, contributions, and influence of Van Rensselaer Potter on the roots of bioethics. In the last few decades, dozens of papers have been written and published, including several doctoral theses and defenses on V. R. Potter‘s concept of bioethics. In those works, the context of the emergence of Potter’s bioethics has sometimes been suggested, but never analyzed thoroughly. We identify seven pillars of (...) influence for Van Rensselaer Potter’s bioethical credo, drawing on several facts from the rich cultural heritage of Wisconsin, where Potter had lived and worked for the most part of his life. (shrink)

Resumo: As grandes corporações de comunicação, no Brasil, operam como construtoras de sentidos, por meio de narrativas sintonizadas com os interesses de grupos e atores sociais, com desprezo para as demandas e os direitos dos setores populares. Uma prática semelhante de comunicação foi vivenciada por Frantz Fanon, na África. No entanto, o ativista conseguiu fazer da sua práxis jornalística um instrumento a serviço da justiça e da libertação de povos africanos oprimidos. Essa prática libertária de Fanon identifica-se com os ideais (...) da bioética global, criada posteriormente por Van Rensselaer Potter. Frente a esse cenário, esta reflexão quer investigar em que sentido a práxis jornalística de Fanon, durante a guerra de libertação argelina, em busca de justiça social e de libertação, se identifica com os fundamentos da bioética global proposta posteriormente por Potter. A análise consiste numa argumentação de caráter analítico-dedutivo. Se, com a bioética global, Potter procurou restaurar um sentido humano da práxis científica e tecnológica, Fanon buscou esse objetivo como comunicador social e médico.: The big communication corporations of Brazil operate as constructers of meaning trough syntonized narratives in behalf of groups and social players, and with contempt for the rights and demands of popular sectors. A similar communication practice was experienced by Frantz Fanon in Africa. However, the activist was able to make an instrument in service of justice and liberation of oppressed African people from his journalistic practice. This libertarian practice of Fanon identifies oneself with the subsequently created global bioethics of Van Rensselaer Potter. In the face of this scenario, this reflection wants to investigate in what sense the journalistc praxis of Fanon during the Argelian Revolution, in pursuit of social justice and liberation, identifies itself with the global bioethics principles later proposed by Potter? The analyses consists in an anaclitic deductive character. If with global bioethci Potter searched to restore a human sense of the technological and scientific praxis, Fanon seeked this goal as an social communicator and physician. (shrink)

Van Rensselaer Potter (1911-2001), le biologiste à l’origine du terme « bioéthique » dans les écrits nord-américains, considère que « real bioethics falls in the context of the ideals of […] Aldo Leopold », un forestier, philosophe et poète ayant marqué le XXe siècle. Associer Leopold à Potter a pour effet de placer la bioéthique dans la famille des éthiques de l’environnement, ce qui la différencie du sens conventionnel retenu en médecine et en recherche depuis le Rapport (...) Belmont (1979), une déclaration ayant propulsé l’institutionnalisation de la bioéthique en Amérique du Nord. Cependant, diviser la bioéthique entre le médical et l’environnemental est réducteur. Potter propose au contraire une bioéthique globale s’intéressant aux enjeux situés à leur interface, dont ceux concernant la terre, la vie sauvage, la surpopulation, la consommation, etc. Cet article vise à amorcer un nouveau chantier d’analyse de la pensée de Potter en s’appuyant sur l’héritage de Leopold en biologie. Une synthèse de cette vision potterienne est proposée de manière à considérer son œuvre comme un tout cohérent s’intégrant aux grands débats qui transcendent les XXe et XXIe siècles. Sa vision apparaît comme une sagesse collective et prospective sous la forme d’une science de la survie et d’un code de bioéthique. Dépassant l’éthique de l’environnement, son association avec Leopold offre un modèle de la complexité s’imposant comme cas indissociable du contexte qui l’englobe, en améliorant nos façons d’intervenir en pratique dans un monde en constante transformation, à titre de gouvernance adaptative et de sagesse de la responsabilité. (shrink)

As constantes mudanças da sociedade contemporânea, principalmente relacionadas ao desenvolvimento do progresso tecnocientífico, tem exigido uma contínua reinvenção da sociedade para acompanhar essas mudanças. Essas transformações têm impactado a totalidade da vida humana, e da biosfera. Se o futuro da natureza humana e da vida da biosfera eram considerados certos, não exigindo a prática de princípios específicos para que isso pudesse continuar a existir, Van Rensselaer Potter (1911-2001) com sua proposta de uma bioética global, e Edgar Morin (1921- (...) atual) com sua teoria da complexidade, alertam-nos de que é preciso buscar novos saberes à educação para garantir a existência futura. Diante dessa realidade marcada pelo acelerado progresso da ciência e da tecnologia, que por estar dissociada do mundo do mundo dos valores tem ameaçado a existência da vida em geral no futuro, esta pesquisa quer investigar como a bioética global de Potter faz interface com a teoria da complexidade de Edgar Morin, em vista de novos saberes à educação do futuro, que possibilite a sobrevivência futura da vida humana e da biosfera? Trata-se de uma pesquisa bibliográfica, de caráter teórico conceitual, a partir das principais obras dos autores em foco, e de seus comentadores. Embora o cientista e o sociólogo tenham problematizado em realidades distintas, ambos apresentam um núcleo de preocupações em comum que ameaçam a vida humana e da biosfera no futuro. Por isso, propõem novos saberes à educação, saberes de um novo tipo, que vão além de uma simples disciplina dentro de um modelo de pensar. Novos saberes que privilegiem o a construção de pontes entre as ciências com as humanidades, o diálogo interdisciplinar, a aproximação das questões ético-políticas em vista de uma antropoética (Morin) e de uma educação bioético-política comprometida com a sobrevivência futura da humanidade (Potter). (shrink)

About 1970, Van Rensselaer Potter coined the term bioethics to bring under one heading broad questions of human survival, environment, and biology. In 1971, Potter outlined a statement of principles that linked the ethics of the biological sciences with the ethics of environmental concern. Regrettably, the field that adopted his rubric bioethics immediately diverged from Potter’s interests. Bioethics has become for the most part identified with medical ethics or health care ethics and in so doing has (...) developed few ethical principles and analyses in relationship to environmental ethics. Similarly, environmental ethics seldom touches on clinical or health care issues, even though the field of environmental health has grown greatly in recent decades. It is the purpose of this article to indicate briefly some of the topics that could be treated effectively as part of a project to reconnect medical ethics and environmental ethics into what may be called sustainable bioethics. (shrink)

Van Rensselaer Potter was an American biochemist who worked in the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. In 1970, in an article in this journal, Potter coined the term bioethics to combine a new discipline that combines biological knowledge with ethics. Potter wrote, “Ethical values cannot be separated from biological facts” (p. 127). His conception was broad-ranging: “We are in great need of a land ethic, a wild-life ethic, a population (...) ethic, a consumption ethic, an urban ethic, an international ethic, a geriatric ethic, and so on. All of these problems call for actions that are based on values and biological facts. All of them involve bioethics, and survival of the .. (shrink)

Dr. Van Rensselaer Potter was always quick to point out that a viable ethics must be based upon a viable scientific knowledge base. The implications are clear, that a global ethics must be based upon a global philosophy. The present discussion provides the conceptual basis for a Global Philosophy, specifically a global theology with criteria of belief for a mature Global Bioethics.

Contemporary biomedical ethics and environmental ethics share a common ancestry in Aldo Leopold's and Van Rensselaer Potter's initial broad visions of a connected biosphere. Over the past five decades, the two fields have become strangers. Public health ethics, a new subfield of bioethics, emerged from the belly of contemporary biomedical ethics and has evolved over the past 25 years. It has moved from its traditional concern with the tension between individual autonomy and community health to a wider focus (...) on social justice and solidarity. Public health has a broad focus that includes individual, community, and environmental health. Public health ethics attends to these broad commitments reflected in the increasing concern with the connectedness of health of individuals to the health of populations, to the health of animals, to the health of the environment; it is well situated to reconnect all three “fields” of ethics to promote a healthier planet. (shrink)

Estamos a un año del cincuentenario de la aparición formal de la bioética en el escenario científico global. El afortunado neologismo usado por Potter en 1970 para vincular las ciencias experimentales con las ciencias humanísticas, creando un enfoque interdisciplinar indispensable -esencia de la bioética-, el cual pretende recuperar el liderazgo de la filosofía -particularmente de la ética- a fin de orientar apropiadamente los desarrollos de las ciencias prácticas en boga, como la biología, la ecología, la química, la cibernética, las (...) nuevas biotecnologías, la biomedicina, siempre con respeto de la dignidad del ser humano y su entorno. Es necesario estar alerta a ciertas tendencias actuales guiadas principalmente por intereses económicos y posverdad, corrientes transhumanistas que parecieran dar un nuevo giro copernicano en la reflexión científico-filosófica, en donde la esencia del ser humano pareciera esfumarse y quedar al libre arbitrio de las ciencias cibernéticas. ¿Qué hacer entonces? El reto que se vislumbra en el horizonte es volver a descubrir una racionalidad que la sustente, o como Potter decía en 1970: "El conocimiento de cómo utilizar el conocimiento" ¿Qué tan cerca está esta nueva ciencia de alcanzar las metas que su fundador Van Rensselaer Potter propuso para unir las ciencias experimentales con las ciencias humanísticas? ¿La biología con la filosofía, y a su vez destacar la urdimbre jurídica que de manera natural brota ante problemáticas y retos tan relevantes en el ámbito clínico, como son los que aborda y atiende la bioética como ciencia? En este contexto la bioética surge como una disciplina con un especial interés por discernir en esta multitud de nuevas posibilidades lo que es ético de lo que no lo es, lo que humaniza de lo que degrada, lo correcto de lo incorrecto, lo que concuerda con el respeto a la dignidad de las personas o no. De ahí el interés en aportar un conjunto de escritos científicos acerca de sus fundamentos y principales aplicaciones, tanto para personal de salud, alumnos de pregrado y posgrado, docentes, como a quienes pertenecen a comités hospitalarios: abogados, filósofos, representantes religiosos, así como profesionales de otros ámbitos, incluidas la investigación y la práctica clínica, que les permita tomar las decisiones correctas, dentro del marco del derecho sanitario vigente de nuestro país y conforme a los tratados internacionales de los que México es parte. El libro tiene como objetivo presentar a los estudiantes, docentes, investigadores y profesionales de distintas carreras, interesados en este ámbito, los fundamentos antropológicos y humanísticos de la novedosa y polémica ciencia de la bioética, sus campos de aplicación, los dilemas que suelen presentarse, así como algunas propuestas de solución de casos clínicos concretos por un grupo interdisciplinar de académicos de prestigiadas instituciones educativas de nuestro país. (shrink)

The article compares different models of bioethics. The dominant model considers bioethics as just a new area of applied ethics focusing in its origin mainly on questions of medical ethics like those rising from reproductive medicine. Within the framework of this concept, the formal application of ethical principles on medical practices is normally understood as a strategy for the preservation of personal autonomy of the individual. Another model linked e.g. to the names of Van Rensselaer Potter or Hans (...) Jonas can be called a "holistic" one and refers to ethical issues discussed within the greater context of "general meditation" of life in general, nature and human life-worlds. Holistic bioethics focuses on the idea of integrity, and it also allows an internal "living" pluralism of perspectives, which corresponds to the self-differentiation of life in a plurality of life-worlds. The third model is an integrative bioethics which not only tries to combine the perspectives of autonomy on the one hand, life and nature as a whole on the other, but also shows that bioethics is founded on its own sources of normativity. From these sources also rises its task of “integrating” the perspectives of different scientific disciplines on issues of life in general. The concept of "integrative bioethics" is promoted in the article because of the following characteristics: integrative bioethics considers all kinds of interaction between autonomous persons, living beings and nature in general; it is transdisciplinary and therefore based on a dialogue of all sciences in which bioethical awareness of the problem may arise; it is open also to non-scientific manifestations of individual and social consciousness and therefore in discussing live in a normative sense nevertheless stays in contact with the real life-worlds of real people. At the end of the article integrative bioethics is discussed with regard to the example of the meaning of the idea of a “natural will”. (shrink)

In the late 1960s Van Rensselaer Potter, a biochemist and cancer researcher, thought that our survival was threatened by the domination of military policy makers and producers of material goods ignorant of biology. He called for a new field of Bioethics—“a science of survival.” Bioethics did develop, but with a narrower focus on medical ethics. Recently there have been attempts to broaden that focus to bring biomedical ethics together with environmental ethics. Though the two have many differences—in habits (...) of thought, scope of concern, and value commitments—in this paper we argue that they often share common cause and we identify common ground through an examination of two case studies, one addressing drug development, the other food production. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of ‘community’ in the context of global bioethics. With the present globalization of bioethics, new and interesting references are made to this concept. Some are familiar, for example, community consent. This article argues that the principle of informed consent is too individual-oriented and that in other cultures, consent can be community-based. Other references to ‘community’ are related to the novel principle of benefit sharing in the context of bioprospecting. The application of this principle necessarily requires (...) the identification and construction of communities. On the global level there are also new uses of the concept of community as ‘global community.’ Three uses are distinguished: (1) a diachronic use, including past, present, and future generations, (2) a synchronic ecological use, including nonhuman species, and (3) a synchronic planetary use, including all human beings worldwide. Although there is a tension between the communitarian perspective and the idea of global community, this article argues that the third use can broaden communitarianism. The current development towards cosmopolitanism is creating a new global community that represents humanity as a whole, enabling identification of world citizens and evoking a sense of global solidarity and responsibility. The emergence of global bioethics today demonstrates this development. (shrink)

At the September 1992 Birth of Bioethics conference observing the 30th anniversary of the Seattle kidney dialysis program, Warren Reich discussed the “bilocated” birth of the term bioethics. He showed that the term bioethics was coined in Michigan by Van Rensselaer Potter and that the term was also apparently conceived of independently at about the same time in 1970–1971 in Washington, D.C., by Andre Hellegers and Sargent Shriver. Potter's work, like many similar works in the early 1970s, (...) was concerned with the growing global biological crisis of human overpopulation, the destruction of species, and how to respond to these. He prefaced his book Bioethics with a “Bioethical Creed for Individuals,” outlining duties to respond to this crisis in a meaningful and scientific way. Hellegers and Shriver used the neologism to name the new Joseph and Rose Kennedy Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction and Bioethics. The Center was to study concerns somewhat different from Potter's: the technological revolution in healthcare and its impact on reproduction, investigator-patient relations, and medical ethics. (shrink)

The first book on my shelf at the newly created Program on Human Values and Health Sciences at the University of Tennessee Center for the Health Sciences in Memphis was by Van Rensselaer Potter on Global Bioethics. He was a cancer specialist at the University of Wisconsin and had the vision that bioethics should be a global concern—global in terms of scope, disciplines involved, and relationship to the environment and cultural context. This view has shaped my own career (...) as well as influencing many others. (shrink)

Pope Francis’s encyclical on ecology addresses the deep and abiding problems of atomism, exploitation, and prodigality that distort the God–human-nature relationship. The invitation to think and act in more integrated and integrating ways—already put forward in Evangelii gaudium—thwarts our becoming “nomads without roots” and binds ostensibly disparate voices in a solidarity that is truly global in its reach. The resolve for such a change in worldview and agency is reminiscent of Van Rensselaer Potter’s original conceptualization of bioethics as (...) a field of study and application that would bridge the disciplines. (shrink)

The article compares different models of bioethics. The dominant model considers bioethics as just a new area of applied ethics focusing in its origin mainly on questions of medical ethics like those rising from reproductive medicine. Within the framework of this concept, the formal application of ethical principles on medical practices is normally understood as a strategy for the preservation of personal autonomy of the individual. Another model linked e.g. to the names of Van Rensselaer Potter or Hans (...) Jonas can be called a "holistic" one and refers to ethical issues discussed within the greater context of "general meditation" of life in general, nature and human life-worlds. Holistic bioethics focuses on the idea of integrity, and it also allows an internal "living" pluralism of perspectives, which corresponds to the self-differentiation of life in a plurality of life-worlds. The third model is an integrative bioethics which not only tries to combine the perspectives of autonomy on the one hand, life and nature as a whole on the other, but also shows that bioethics is founded on its own sources of normativity. From these sources also rises its task of “integrating” the perspectives of different scientific disciplines on issues of life in general. The concept of "integrative bioethics" is promoted in the article because of the following characteristics: integrative bioethics considers all kinds of interaction between autonomous persons, living beings and nature in general; it is transdisciplinary and therefore based on a dialogue of all sciences in which bioethical awareness of the problem may arise; it is open also to non-scientific manifestations of individual and social consciousness and therefore in discussing live in a normative sense nevertheless stays in contact with the real life-worlds of real people. At the end of the article integrative bioethics is discussed with regard to the example of the meaning of the idea of a “natural will”. (shrink)

Bioethics and Global Bioethics are currently among the most visible programs in ethics in the global academic community. It was my good fortune to have met Dr. Van Rensselaer Potter in 1963, long before he coined the term “Bioethics” and emerged as America's first Bioethicist, maintaining “The Wisconsin Tradition” established by John Muir and Aldo Leopold. Van believed that all ethics are properly based on a pan-cultural scientific knowledge base. How it is that ethics are related to knowledge, (...) and to values and morals, is the subject of this discussion. (shrink)

Adaptive success and evolution are determined by how we interact with the natural environment and all other forms of life. Yet in our pursuit to dominate the natural world, we have lost sight of this basic premise and continue to exploit natural resources, to contaminate, to consume more than necessary and to misuse our reproductive capacities. For this reason, global bioethics emerged in the 1980s, a culmination of mental resistance on the part of many observers who sought to readdress the (...) balance between humankind and nature – a balance which must be reinstated if we are to survive. Corrective measures are required, which should be free from purely religious or political influences because their ideologies are frequently founded on strategies of power, with little regard for the general well-being of all living species. Global bioethics, as opposed to bioethics, was formulated by myself, Van Rensselaer Potter, Antonio Moroni, Laura Westra and others, to transcend the restraints of science, uniting it with the humanities to create a new expanded consciousness, an alliance between life and the environment in which all factors – environmental, biological, physical, psychological, social and economic – recognize that they are inderdependent. (shrink)

Após a conclusão do curso de medicina psiquiátrica em Lyon, em 1951, Fanon foi acolhido no hospital Saint Alban, para um aprofundamento dos estudos psiquiátricos, tendo ali, trabalhado e pesquisado sob a supervisão do psiquiatra espanhol Francesc Tosquelles, onde praticou os fundamentos da psicoterapia institucional, desenvolvida por Tosquelles e seus colaboradores naquele hospital. Mais tarde, na Argélia, Fanon atuou no hospital de Blida-Joinvile e, posteriormente, na Tunísia, introduzindo reformas, à luz da psicoterapia institucional. A concepção de ser humano que cultivava (...) e a compreensão de que a sociedade doente produz pessoas doentes, levaram-no a um profundo conflito, à medida em que foi tomando consciência da violência do colonialismo francês contra o povo argelino, conforme relatou na carta de demissão que enviou ao Ministro Residente, Robert Lacoste, em 1956. Após o pedido de demissão, adentrou o movimento de libertação da Argélia. Escreveu livros e artigos combatendo o colonialismo e difundindo os ideais revolucionários. Van Renssalaer Potter, por longo tempo atuou como biólogo e bioquímico no MacArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, na Universidade de Winsconsin, na cidade de Madison, onde doentes de câncer eram tratados. Na década de 1970, publicou um livro seminal, Bioética, ponte para o futuro. Anos depois, publicou estudos de Bioética Global. Mais tarde, articulou conceitos de Bioética Profunda. Preocupado com a sobrevivência humana neste planeta, atacado pela irresponsabilidade humana, Potter conclamou a humanidade à tomada de consciência e mudança de condutas. Comparando-se os dois autores, observa-se que os escritos de Fanon foram produzidos na década de 1950, sendo que seu último livro, Os Condenados da Terra, foi escrito em 1961. Potter, por sua vez, escreveu os primeiros estudos de bioética na década de 1970, cerca de uma década após o falecimento de Fanon. Respeitados os limites cronológicos, este estudo se pergunta: A dialética da medicina como política e da política como medicina, na práxis de Fanon, teria sintonias bioéticas? Para enfrentar este problema, o trabalho contextualiza a formação de Fanon, identificando os princípios da práxis médico-psiquiátrica dele. Em seguida, demonstra-se as contradições do colonialismo, identificando uma dialética da medicina como política e da política como medicina. Adiante, informa-se a contribuição de Van Rensselaer Potter, na proposição da bioética. Finalmente, argumenta-se a favor das sintonias bioéticas presentes nas passagens selecionadas. O procedimento metodológico é a pesquisa bibliográfica, analítico-dedutiva. Palavras-chave: Colonialismo. Consciência. Medicina. Política. Sintonias bioéticas. (shrink)

Bioethics has been in existence now for more than twenty years. Much has changed, however, since Van Rensselaer Potter2 first used the term bioethics in 1971. For Potter, bioethics was an applied science with its roots in the biological sciences and its orientation towards the betterment of human life. Today the concept is used in a different context. It has become the name given to the ethical research that has become necessary in light of the new possibilities created (...) by revolutionary developments in medical science. Generally speaking, bioethics is concerned with the beginning and the end of life. In a certain sense, however, this is merely a de facto definition which does not possess a great deal of internal logical consistency.If we attempt to reconstruct the incredibly rapid evolution of bioethics we quickly realize how the times were truly ripe for this new discipline to begin to mature. In a very short space of time bioethics was taken seriously in just about every University and medical centre the world over. There is no part of the world which has not organised a colloquium or developed a study programme or created a Centre for Biomedical Ethics. Yet this advance is hardly surprising if we consider the fact that there have been revolutionary developments in themedical world in the 1960’s which have made it necessary to engage in serious ethical reflection on the borderline questions of human life.From the start, bioethicists have concerned themselves primarily with ethical problems related to reproductive technology such as in vitro fertilization, medically assisted fertilization with donor gametes, pregnancy termination, and the status of the embryo. More recently, however, questions concerning the end of life have entered the bioethicist’s field of interest, e.g. ethical questions related to euthanasia and the problems surrounding the artificial nutrition and hydration of persistently vegetative patients. In the meantime, of course, bioethics has broadened its field of interest beyond questions related to the beginning and end of life. Serious ethical and juridical reflection has resulted from the problems surrounding organ transplantation, transplantation of brain tissue, and the problem of AIDS.With the many recent developments in genetics, the first applications of gene therapy, and the world-wide human genome research project bioethics is assured an exciting future. It is clear that the issues which grab the bioethicist’s attention are rather disparate. Moreover, we are now beginning to realize that a whole gamut of specific questions cannot be addressed unless the broader context of the ethics of health care in general is taken into account. Such a realization has led to something of a new movement within the bioethical sphere which is interested in widening the notion of ‘medical ethics’ or ‘ethics of health’.The purpose of this article is to help familiarize the reader with the world of bioethics. Such a task is both simple and complex; bioethics has become a house with many rooms, a house, furthermore, which is being constantly renovated and rebuilt. By way of introduction, we shall take an investigative and evaluative stroll through the broad landscape bioethics has traced in the first twenty years of its existence. (shrink)

Bioethics has been in existence now for more than twenty years. Much has changed, however, since Van Rensselaer Potter2 first used the term bioethics in 1971. For Potter, bioethics was an applied science with its roots in the biological sciences and its orientation towards the betterment of human life. Today the concept is used in a different context. It has become the name given to the ethical research that has become necessary in light of the new possibilities created (...) by revolutionary developments in medical science. Generally speaking, bioethics is concerned with the beginning and the end of life. In a certain sense, however, this is merely a de facto definition which does not possess a great deal of internal logical consistency.If we attempt to reconstruct the incredibly rapid evolution of bioethics we quickly realize how the times were truly ripe for this new discipline to begin to mature. In a very short space of time bioethics was taken seriously in just about every University and medical centre the world over. There is no part of the world which has not organised a colloquium or developed a study programme or created a Centre for Biomedical Ethics. Yet this advance is hardly surprising if we consider the fact that there have been revolutionary developments in themedical world in the 1960’s which have made it necessary to engage in serious ethical reflection on the borderline questions of human life.From the start, bioethicists have concerned themselves primarily with ethical problems related to reproductive technology such as in vitro fertilization, medically assisted fertilization with donor gametes, pregnancy termination, and the status of the embryo. More recently, however, questions concerning the end of life have entered the bioethicist’s field of interest, e.g. ethical questions related to euthanasia and the problems surrounding the artificial nutrition and hydration of persistently vegetative patients. In the meantime, of course, bioethics has broadened its field of interest beyond questions related to the beginning and end of life. Serious ethical and juridical reflection has resulted from the problems surrounding organ transplantation, transplantation of brain tissue, and the problem of AIDS.With the many recent developments in genetics, the first applications of gene therapy, and the world-wide human genome research project bioethics is assured an exciting future. It is clear that the issues which grab the bioethicist’s attention are rather disparate. Moreover, we are now beginning to realize that a whole gamut of specific questions cannot be addressed unless the broader context of the ethics of health care in general is taken into account. Such a realization has led to something of a new movement within the bioethical sphere which is interested in widening the notion of ‘medical ethics’ or ‘ethics of health’.The purpose of this article is to help familiarize the reader with the world of bioethics. Such a task is both simple and complex; bioethics has become a house with many rooms, a house, furthermore, which is being constantly renovated and rebuilt. By way of introduction, we shall take an investigative and evaluative stroll through the broad landscape bioethics has traced in the first twenty years of its existence. (shrink)