ABSTRACT
Over the past fifteen years, the field of bioethics has dramatically evolved and developed in Switzerland for reasons I map in the present paper.1 From the creation, in 1979, of a Central Ethics Committee (CEC) – appointed by the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences (SAMS) – to the foundation of the Swiss Society of Biomedical Ethics (1989) and the newly created International Master in Medical Humanities2 in 2002, with its headquarter in Lugano (Switzerland), bioethics has come to the center of attention in the media, public opinion, politics and academia. As this overview shows, bioethics in Switzerland began in the mid1980s as a response to a “social protest” by which various groups and organizations (particularly pro-life organizations) demanded more accountability in relation to certain medical practices (e.g., abortion, biotechnology, genetic research, and so forth). To give an adequate reply to the public and to provide academic credentials to bioethical reflections, the Swiss Society of Biomedical Ethics (Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Biomedizinische Ethik, SGBE; Société Suisse d’Ethique Biomédicale, SSEB) was created in 1989, a date that can be considered the birth of bioethics as a recognized field in Switzerland.
