This volume, which has developed from the Fourteenth Trans- Disciplinary
Symposium on Philosophy and Medicine, September 5-8, 1982, at Tel Aviv
University, Israel, contains the contributions of a group of
distinguished scholars who together examine the ethical issues raised by
the advance of biomedical science and technology. We are, of course,
still at the beginning of a revolution in our understanding of human
biology; scientific medicine and clinical research are scarcely one
hundred years old. Both the sciences and the technology of medicine
until ten or fifteen years ago had the feeling of the 19th century about
them; we sense that they belonged to an older time; that era is ending.
The next twenty-five to fifty years of investigative work belong to
neurobiology, genetics, and reproductive biology. The technologies of
information processing and imaging will make diagnosis and treatment
almost incomprehensible by my generation of physicians. Our science and
technology will become so powerful that we shall require all of the art
and wisdom we can muster to be sure that they remain dedicated, as
Francis Bacon hoped four centuries ago, "to the uses of life." It is
well that, as philosophers and physicians, we grapple with the issues
now when they are relatively simple, and while the pace of change is
relatively slow. We require a strategy for the future; that strategy
must be worked out by scientists, philosophers, physicians, lawyers,
theologians, and, I should like to add, artists and poets.