The historical contingency of bioethics

The principles of bioethics have been historically contingent, a product of social values, circumstances, and experience. During the early twentieth century, they rested on a doctor-knows-best autonomy that permitted physicians to perform research on human subjects with a minimum degree, if any, of informed consent. The eugenics movement of the period embraced an implicit bioethics by presuming to sterilize individuals for the sake of a larger social benefit, a practice and doctrine that helped lead to the Nazi medical experiments and death camps. After World War II, the promulgation of the Nuremberg Code failed to halt eugenic sterilization and risky human experimentation without informed consent either in civilian or military venues. However, beginning in the 1960s, these practices came under mounting critical scrutiny, partly because of the increasing attention given to individual rights. By now, it is widely understood that concern for individual rights rather than an appeal to some national good belongs at the heart of bioethics.