Abstract

When I finished my doctoral dissertation in Bioethics fifteen years ago it was more than often that I had to explain to obviously surprised people what Bioethics is. Moreover, each time I had to explain that I am neither a physician nor a biologist, but an ethicist. Nowadays I am asked only scarcely-to be frank, it’s been years since the last time. You see, Bioethics now is an absolutely established field in the academic world, but more importantly it has earned its reputation among people as a condition sine qua non occupation for everybody involved in the so-called life sciences; as for ethics, Bioethics has been something like a fresh, revitalizing breeze: the most interesting debates in the field-and also the most intense-almost exclusively regard bioethical issues. People choose what to occupy their minds with out of either playfulness or necessity –that is, either because something attracts the thought as irresistibly charming, or because real life necessitates dealing with it. Sometimes, not very often, charm and necessity coincide, and their matching produces miraculously rich debates-this is the case of Bioethics. In this short essay I will try to provide a brief outline of my grasp of Bioethics, while at the same time I aspire to convey a little of the charm Bioethics exerts on anyone who happens to deal with it.