The Birth of Bioethics: Autobiographical Reflections of a Patient Person

Abstract

The single most important intellectual event in my career in medical ethics occurred the day I realized that the Hippocratic ethic for medicine was not merely outdated and irrelevant but actually in conflict with all the dominant religious and secular moral traditions of our day. Whether one stood in any of the great modern religious traditions or in any of the camps of secular philosophy—the liberal tradition of political philosophy, Marxism, or more recent feminist or communitarian views—the Hippocratic ethic was wrong, both metaethically (epistemologically) and normatively.