ABSTRACT
The 'bioethics' was invented in the 1970s to refer to a cluster of new and unprecedented ethical or moral issues thrown up by the new forms of biotechnology, particularly in the fields of reproductive technology and genetic manipulation. Traditional medical ethics was mainly concerned with the relationship between the physician and patient. In the Hippocratic code and its variants this relationship was seen as a paternalistic one: physician was to patient as parent was to child. In Australia, the former National Bioethics Consultative Committee was set up in 1987 to advise the federal and state ministers of health mainly on issues arising from the new reproductive technologies. In Australia, the National Bioethics Consultative Committee and the Medical Research Ethics Committee were both in 1991 absorbed into a new body called the Australian Health Ethics Committee. The therapeutic criticism and exorcism of the misleading models of ethical discussion is an important part of medical ethics and bioethics and health-care ethics.
