introduction

What is bioethics?
Bioethics is the study of typically controversial ethics brought about by advances in biology and
medicine. It is also moral discernment as it relates to medical policy, practice, and research.
Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life
sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, and philosophy. It also includes the study of the
more commonplace questions of values ("the ethics of the ordinary") which arise in primary
care and other branches of medicine.
Bioethics is an activity; it is a shared, reflective examination of ethical issues in health care,
health science, and health policy. These fields have always had ethical standards, of course,
handed down within each profession, and often without question. It takes place in the media,
in the academy, in classrooms, and in labs, offices, and hospital wards. It involves not just
doctors, but patients, not just scientists and politicians but the general public. Traditional
ethical standards have been articulated, reflected on, challenged, and sometimes revised;
standards for new issues have been created and then challenged and revised. The
conversation is often sparked by new developments, like the possibility of cloning. But bioethics
also raises new questions about old issues, like the use of placebos and the treatment of pain.
Bioethics is concerned with questions about basic human values such as the rights to life and
health, and the rightness or wrongness of certain developments in healthcare institutions, life
technology, medicine, the health professions and about society's responsibility for the life and
health of its members. Bioethics involves issues relating to the beginning and end of human life,
all the way from issues relating to in-vitro fertilization and abortion to euthanasia and palliative
care. Bioethics has an impact on every level of human community from the local nursing home
to the huge international conferences on issues like the Human Genome. Bioethics is a branch
of "applied ethics" and requires the expertise of people working in a wide range disciplines
including: law, philosophy, theology, medicine, the life sciences, nursing and social science.
Bioethics is full of difficult ethical questions for everybody: families, hospitals, governments and
civilization. Fundamental values are at stake: human life, the dignity of the frail and elderly, just
healthcare, bodily integrity and the ability to make reasonable decisions.