ABSTRACT
In the same simplifying manner in which C. P. Snow spoke of the two cultures of science and humanities, we can also speak in a heuristic sense of two mentalities in questions of biomedicine. The biomedical mentality, involved in the link between experimentation and clinical application, is a mentality o f hope for promotion and acceleration. Limits are seen as selfevident-for example, that it is forbidden to create human monsters on purpose-or as limited to the present social context, or they are considered to be purely individual limitations set by virtue of specific options, for example in the case of religious groups. In that experts consider themselves responsible for the promotion of interests of health or other great aims in a constantly developing society, they often regard political opposition that opts for the exclusion of restrictions as a mixture of ignorance, conservatism, and fundamentalism. On the other hand, ‘bioethics’, created by scientific experts and by their philosophical ‘servants’, is considered to be a kind of a conspiracy against the needs and values of the people. This attitude is often articulated in, for example, Germany.
