[Bioethics: history and problems]

This paper aims at describing the circumstances of the birth of bioethics. In the first section, the paper stresses some historical data supporting the widely diffused opinion according to which bioethics arose in the USA at the beginning of the Seventies. In the second, two of the most important factors in the birth of bioethics are discussed: namely, the possibilities opened by genetic engineering and the changes in the medical enterprise and health care ethics. In the third section the paper discusses one of the most important practical realization of bioethics: the creation of ethical committees.