Introduction
This topic introduces bioethics as a discipline: what it means, how it developed from the Hippocratic tradition and from twentieth-century scandals in research, and the four principles that most clinical ethical reasoning still uses. It forms the base for later topics on informed consent, parental decision making and advance planning.
Definition and scope
Bioethics is the systematic study of moral questions raised by medicine and the life sciences. It covers clinical care, research involving humans and animals, public health, allocation of scarce resources, and the relationship between humans and the environment. The term was first used in 1927 by the German pastor and educator Fritz Jahr, who argued for an ethics extending to all living things. It was popularised in 1970 by the American biochemist Van Rensselaer Potter, who saw it as a bridge between biological knowledge and human values.
- Medical ethics is traditionally centred on the doctor-patient relationship and clinical practice.
- Bioethics is broader: it includes research ethics, health policy, professional codes and social questions.
- Normative ethics asks what people ought to do; applied ethics tests these norms on concrete dilemmas; metaethics asks what moral claims mean and whether they can be true.
- Bioethics is interdisciplinary and draws on philosophy, law, medicine, theology, sociology and psychology.