From The New England Journal of Medicine The field of bioethics has grown enormously over the past few decades. Consequently, people entering the field may try to acquire knowledge about it as rapidly as possible by learning only about current consensus and controversies. By doing so, however, they may not learn that accepted or controversial views concerning bioethics can reflect the time and circumstances in which they arose. Without this awareness, they may not realize that some of those who helped forge bioethics did so at considerable personal sacrifice. And without this awareness, they may not anticipate what they, too, must do if they believe that their views should be heard and should prevail. In The Birth of Bioethics Jonsen has written an in-depth review of bioethics, including a historical analysis of the field. But this is also a book about heroes. Jonsen presents the growth of bioethics from 1947, when the Nuremberg Code was drawn up, to 1987. He does so in three chapters on the religious, philosophical, and governmental aspects of the subject. He covers five major areas of bioethics, including research and death and dying, and deals with bioethics as a discipline and as a topic of discourse. In the final chapter, he gives his explanation of why bioethics arose in this country. The history he presents includes advanced ideas, such as H. Tristram Engelhardt's concept of ethics as an "enterprise in controversy resolution" and Robert Veatch's criticism of the