An article by Warren Reich in the December 1994 issue of this journal concludes that the word "bioethics" and the field of study it names experienced a "bilocated birth" in 1970/1971 under Van Rensselaer Potter, at the University of Wisconsin, and André Hellegers, at Georgetown University. Further historical inquiry confirms (1) that there were, from the start, some major differences—even clashes—between the Potter and the Hellegers/Georgetown understandings of bioethics; and (2) that the Hellegers/Georgetown approach came to be the more widely (...) accepted meaning of the term, while Potter's idea of bioethics remained largely marginalized. However, this inquiry also results in a third, unanticipated, conclusion: that Hellegers (in contrast to the dominant model offered by the Georgetown scholars) actually proposed a global approach to bioethics, bringing his vision much closer to Potter's evolving view than previously has been acknowledged. (shrink)

As Edward Hundert--a philosopher, psychiatrist, and award-winning educator--makes clear in this eloquent interdisciplinary work, the newly emerging model for ...

The Report's editorial mandate is both to examine issues of current importance and to invite bioethics to broaden the range of issues it probes. Thus along with articles exploring the relationship between patients and doctors, or health policy, or any of the myriad other familiar concerns of ethics in medicine, from time to time the Report has published articles about public health, animal experimentation, or “environmental ethics” broadly construed. The most recent was the special supplement Nature, Polis, Ethics in the (...) November‐December (1998) issue. Some, of course, have argued that “bio‐ethics” ought always to encompass concern for issues beyond the bedside. When the biologist Van Rensselaer Potter proposed the term bioethics nearly thirty years ago, the field he had in mind lay at the intersection of ethics and the biological sciences in general. In light especially of Nature, Polis, Ethics's call for a substantive “humans‐nature ethics” it seems appropriate, therefore, to invite one of the earliest proponents of a generous understanding of bioethics to reflect on the character of the field and the questions with which it should grapple. Below Potter and colleague Peter Whitehouse share their thoughts on this most interdisciplinary of disciplines. —B‐JC, GK. (shrink)

Bioethics represents a dramatic revision of the centuries-old professional ethics that governed the behavior of physicians and their relationships with patients. This venerable ethics code was challenged in the years after World War II by the remarkable advances in the biomedical sciences and medicine that raised questions about the definition of death, the use of life-support systems, organ transplantation, and reproductive interventions. In response, philosophers and theologians, lawyers and social scientists joined together with physicians and scientists to rethink and revise (...) the old standards. Governments established commissions to recommend policies. Courts heard arguments and legislatures passed laws. This book is the first broad history of the growing field of bioethics. Covering the period 1947-1987, it examines the origin and evolution of the debates over human experimentation, genetic engineering, organ transplantation, termination of life-sustaining treatment, and new reproductive technologies. It assesses the contributions of philosophy, theology, law and the social sciences to the expanding discourse of bioethics. Written by one of the field's founders, The Birth of Bioethics is based on extensive archival research into sources that are difficult to obtain and on interviews with many of the leading figures in the moral debates in medicine. A very readable and comprehensive account of the evolution of bioethics, this book stresses the history of ideas but does not neglect the social and cultural context and the people involved. It will serve the information needs of philosophers, ethicists, social historians, and everyone interested in the origins of some of today's most hotly debated issues. (shrink)

Concerns about the sacred—common in everyday moral thinking—have crept into bioethics in various forms. Further, given a certain view of the metaphysics of morals that is now widely endorsed in Western philosophy, there is in principle no reason that judgments about the sacred cannot be part of careful and reasoned moral deliberation.

Extensive historical sleuthing reveals that the word "bioethics" and the field of study it names experienced, in 1970/1971, a "bilocated birth" in Madison, Wisconsin, and in Washington, D.C. Van Rensselaer Potter, at the University of Wisconsin first coined the term; and André Hellegers, at Georgetown University, at the very least, latched onto the already-existing word "bioethics" and first used it in an institutional way to designate the focused area of inquiry that became an academic field of learning and a movement (...) regarding public policy and the life sciences. A further comparison of the Potter and the Hellegers/Georgetown understandings of bioethics and the relative acceptance of the two views will appear in the March 1995 issue of this journal. (shrink)