ABSTRACT
The Nuffield Council on Bioethics was established in 1991 by the UK-based Nuffield Foundation. The roots of the Nuffield Council date back to the 1980s. In those early days of medical ethics and bioethics, medical experts began to realize that technological progress was giving rise to new ethical questions which extended far beyond the boundaries of the Hippocratic oath. Interest in medical ethics was on the rise in the 1990s and attempts were made to institutionalise the discussion of new issues. After an early unstable phase of exploration and constitution during which the Council was regarded with some degree of scepticism and possibly even suspicion by members of the scientific and medical community, it is now successfully established as a key player in its field of activity. The social impact of a research and advisory body such as the Nuffield Council is obviously hard to determine and Foundation staff acknowledged that "there are very few definitive things".
