ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. Early ethical codes often took the form of oaths. Ethical thinking about medical decision-making thus has deep roots but is also characterized by ambiguities. The birth of modern medical ethics can be traced to the Enlightenment and in particular to John Gregory and Thomas Percival. The book is concerned with principle-based approaches to bioethics. Most writing in bioethics emanates from Western societies and is strongly ethnocentric. It is about virtue ethics, the rebirth of which is usually attributed to an essay by G. E. M. Anscombe published in 1958. It is a response to consequentialist and deontological theories which are said to have placed too much emphasis on what we ought to do, rather than concentrating on what sort of person we ought to be and what sort of life we ought to lead.
