Portrait

Advances and new challenges in medicine and the biomedical sciences raise complex ethical questions that pose a challenge both to specialists from a wide range of disciplines and to members of the public.

The SGBE (Swiss Society for Biomedical Ethics) was founded in 1989 to reflect on these questions and to seek understanding beyond the boundaries of individual disciplines. Our Society therefore sees itself as a forum in which different viewpoints are heard and solutions are sought through interdisciplinary debate.

As a professional society, the SGBE brings together people from various disciplines who are professionally involved in bioethics, medical ethics, nursing ethics and the medical humanities, as well as health policy and health law, or who are interested in the relevant issues: experts from the medical profession, the nursing professions, psychology, the natural sciences and various humanities and social sciences, from law and politics, and finally from philosophical and theological ethics.

Operating independently of any institution, the SGBE works closely with the Central Ethics Committee of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences (SAMW), as well as with other societies and institutions such as the SAGW, universities, the FMH, the SBK, professional organisations and patient associations.

It is thanks to membership fees and donations that the SGBE is able to carry out its work and pursue its objectives.