[Facing new ethical challenges and dilemmas]

Considering the present health policy, health service and health care systems, health condition and health demands of the people, proclaimed priorities in biomedical scientific research in the Republic of Croatia, and expected health and disease status in the first decades of the 21st century, the author raises the question of sensitization of the Croatian physicians and the public to new ethical challenges. These questions are arousing attention in the world and Europe as one of the peculiarities mankind is facing in the midst of new scientific, technical and informatic possibilities, at the same time in the context of global impoverishment and restricted public funds, with existing or expected changes in the demographic structure and the life philosophy system of values. In democratic, pluralistic societies, the dimension of human rights is getting increasingly pronounced. This is reflected in the postulation of international, national or professional bioethical standards related to biomedical research, in the emphasis on the indisputable public right to actively make decisions by consensus mechanisms about goals, priorities and limits of individual and collective health care programmes, forms and levels of medical care in the national health service and obligatory health insurance system, as well as about ethical aspects of the relation doctor-patient, at the boundary of the interactions of doctor-patient-profession-individual-community-society relationships.