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Bioethics encompasses medical ethics and extends to include research ethics, ethical issues in new scientific techniques, and environmental policy. This field provides a general and philosophical approach to ethical considerations, complementing the clinical case-oriented perspective of medical ethics. This book explores the birth and evolution of bioethics as a critical component of modern society.
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“Bioethics -- literally "life ethics." It is usually used in a way that includes medical ethics as a subset. (For this reason, you also see the term "biomedical ethics.") As the more general category, bioethics seems to include additional issues that are not necessarily a part of medical ethics, e.g., research ethics, ethical issues related to new scientific techniques such as cloning, and environmental policy. In general usage, persons may sometimes try to contrast bioethics with medical ethics by seeing the former as a more general and philosophical approach to the same issues that the latter considers from a strictly clinical case-oriented approach. For instance, we can talk about ethical issues related to abortion from a general philosophical approach, e.g., what kind of society do we become if abortion is a frequently used method of birth control? Or a clinical perspective, e.g., What right does the doctor have to impose treatment on a dying woman in order to try to bring a fetus to viability?” Albert R. Jonsen. The Birth of Bioethics, NY, Oxford University Press, 1998.