[A history and philosophy of bio-medical ethics seen from a dentist's point of view]

When we think about ethics or morals, we tend to look at them from the viewpoint of here and now. Actual implications of then and there, however, could be different. That is why we should study history of bio-ethics along with philosophy involved in it. Bio-medical ethics is situated in spatial and cultural dimension as well as temporal and historical. Dentistry has been in a peculiar situation in that although it has evolved from the same root as medicine, it has become a separate discipline. Ethical implications of dentistry, however, share the historical and philosophical background with its mother discipline, i.e., medicine, surgery, barber-surgery and even smithery. This paper tries to grasp the main ideas of bio-medical ethics from the ancient Greek and China, and picks up three of them as guiding principles, i.e., deontology and teleology from the west and self-cultivation from the east. It also tracks down the contents of modern biomedical ethics; from etiquette to ethics, from morals to contract (ethics of autonomy), and ethics of professional responsibility. Finally it reviews and analyzes two different traditions of dental professional regulation from the legal and ethical point of view (U.S. and Europe), and proposes a new direction for the construction of dental ethics in Korea.