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Editorial

The Stuff of Life

by Rick Lewis

Bioethics is the ethics of tampering with the stuff of life. (‘bio-’ is from the Greek bios meaning life). When the life in question is human life, it is often called medical ethics. In his introduction to this issue, our guest editor Jeffrey Spike lovingly delineates the different branches of bioethics and recounts the short but event-filled history of his subject.

Bioethics may be a fairly new field of academic enquiry, but its objects range from the very ancient to the very modern.

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