The Beginnings of Bioethics

Abstract

This chapter offers a highly personal window into the early years of bioethics. It interweaves a historical account of the evolution of the interdisciplinary approach to bioethics with first-person anecdotes about the research working groups organized by the newly-created Hastings Center. This hybrid approach provides a unique and rich perspective of the changing societal expectations that coincided with, and in part encouraged, the emergence of bioethics as a field. Some of the changes emphasized include (1) the general reaction against the status of science and medicine as unchallengeable, paternalistic, and authoritarian, (2) an acknowledgment of the impact of physicians’ personal values on the practice of medicine, and (3) the shift to thinking of medicine as a commodity. Trends that seem obvious in hindsight were not especially well-defined or obvious at the time. These reflections encourage a healthy degree of skepticism that today’s bioethicists can achieve sufficient detachment from their own cultural, social, and political context and see the field for what it really is.