[Ethics, health & society]

The sudden advent of new technological devices and sophisticated methods in both biological research and medical practice alerted different social groups to the development of unprecedented problems for moral counsel and decision-making. The field of study called bioethics grew out of religiously motivated concerns, but nowadays it attracts the attention of politicians, lawyers, religious thinkers, philosophers, scientists and doctors. Bioethics is becoming a sphere of interest to an increasing number of people. Each of these groups bring their own values, which are sometimes not in total agreement with the traditional values of medical ethics, to discussion. Therefore, the Author defends a more active participation of doctors through their representative bodies in the discussion of policies concerning the research and development of new technologies, and also the individual use of them when they are available, so that the practice of medicine may preserve the hippocratic legacy, accepting only the external influences when they are not in conflict with the intrinsic morality of medicine.