The rediscovery of Potterian bioethics

Abstract

In 1927, Fritz Jahr coined the term “bioethics” to indicate an “environmental ethics based on biopsychics”. In 1970, Van Rensselaer Potter (without knowing Jahr) also coined the term “bioethics” to indicate a “new global ethics based on biology”. As the same Potter wrote, after 1971 “in the USA there was an immediate explosion of the use of the word bioethics” but with a completely different meaning which became dominant and spread worldwide. He went on to say, “their [the public's] image of bioethics delayed the [global] emergence of what now exists”. Elsewhere I have analyzed how this happened, here I analyze why.