ABSTRACT
The term bioethics' was coined by Van Rensselaer Potter. In order to deal with the fundamental problems of humankind, it was necessary, according to Potter, to develop a new discipline. Van Rensselaer Potter was educated in chemistry and biology. He spent nearly all of his professional life at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he received his Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1938. Bioethics has developed rapidly since the 1970s. Starting in the United States, specialized institutes were established as well as the first professional association and the first academic journal. New ethical problems have emerged related to death and dying, continuing or foregoing treatment, reproductive technology, and allocation of scarce resources. Medical bioethics needs to be combined with ecological bioethics, and other forms of ethics related to human life such as agricultural ethics. All these approaches in bioethics should be merged in a new synthetic and interdisciplinary approach that Potter now calls global bioethics.
