Abstract
What issues should bioethics be looking at in the next forty years? Rather than take on new issues, I believe bioethicists should rethink our approach to bioethical topics more generally. Doing so will require refashioning the field itself, but such a reinvention is the only way we can help bioethics live up to its initial ideals and be relevant to our society.Thinking about the future of bioethics should begin with a fundamental question: Is bioethics even necessary? Most bioethicists would certainly think so, and they might find confirmation in histories of the field like David Rothman's Strangers at the Bedside, in which bioethics was a response to the collapse of doctor-patient relations in the midtwentieth ..