Introduction To Bioethics
                     BIOETHICS
Bioethics is a term with two parts, and each needs some 
explanation. Here, “ethics” refers to the identification, study, and 
resolution or mitigation of conflicts among competing values or 
goals. The “bio” puts the ethical question into a particular 
context.
What is 
Bioethics?
Source: bioethics.msu.edu
Bioethics is commonly understood to refer to the ethical 
implications and applications of the health-related life sciences. 
These implications can run the entire length of the bench-to-
bedside translational pipeline.
Implications
Source: bioethics.msu.edu
The term medical ethics itself has been challenged, however, in 
light of the growing interest in issues dealing with health care 
professions other than medicine, in particular nursing. 
Medical 
ethics
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Bioethics emerged as a distinct field of study in the early 1960s. 
It was influenced not only by advances in the life sciences, 
particularly medicine, but also by the significant cultural and 
societal changes taking place at the time, primarily in the West. 
Emergence 
of Bioethics
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The perfection of certain lifesaving procedures and technologies, 
such as organ transplantation and kidney dialysis, required 
medical officials to make difficult decisions about which patients 
would receive treatment and which would be allowed to die. 
Technology
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Issues in bioethics
Dilemmas can arise for the basic scientist who wants to develop 
synthetic embryos to better study embryonic and fetal 
development, but is not sure just how real the embryos can be 
without running into moral limits on their later destruction. 
Dilemmas
Source: bioethics.msu.edu
The issues studied in bioethics can be grouped into several 
categories. One category concerns the relationship between 
doctor and patient, including issues that arise from conflicts 
between a doctor’s duty to promote the health of his patient and 
the patient’s right to self-determination.
The health 
care context
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Another category of issues concerns a host of philosophical 
questions about the definition and significance of life and death, 
the nature of personhood and identity, and the extent of human 
freedom and individual responsibility.
Traditional 
philosophica
l questions
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Although bioethics—and indeed the whole field of applied ethics 
as currently understood—is a fairly recent phenomenon, there 
have been discussions of moral issues in medicine since ancient 
times.
Moral issues 
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