By the end of the 20th century, bioethics had been twice invented: first by the German theologian Fritz Jahr in1926, and then by the American biologist Van Rensselaer Potter in 1970. These two versions of bioethics,however, have not been the only ones: what became a mainstream was a form of bioethics propagated by theGeorgetown University Kennedy Institute of Ethics, narrowed-down to biomedical ethics. New initiatives andideas appearing primarily in Europe at the beginning of the 21st century - in Spain, Italy, Croatia and elsewhere -guarantee a dynamic development coming back to the broad origins of bioethics as conceived by Jahr and Potter.

By the end of the 20th century, bioethics had been twice invented: first by the German theologian Fritz Jahr in1926, and then by the American biologist Van Rensselaer Potter in 1970. These two versions of bioethics,however, have not been the only ones: what became a mainstream was a form of bioethics propagated by theGeorgetown University Kennedy Institute of Ethics, narrowed-down to biomedical ethics. New initiatives andideas appearing primarily in Europe at the beginning of the 21st century - in Spain, Italy, Croatia and elsewhere -guarantee a dynamic development coming back to the broad origins of bioethics as conceived by Jahr and Potter.