1Unlike classical ethics, bioethics, which preserves medical autonomy and universal values, is said to have healthcare professionals and their patients running a double risk: the risk of a normative constraint, which substitutes the requirements of an oppressive regulation for the judgment of our conscience, and the risk of money which corrupts everything and is satisfied with superficial ethics which does not tackle the wrongs of our consumer society and globalisation.

2This debate, which is also a criticism of bioethics, highlights a reality that cannot be denied: techno-science, to which life sciences contribute, fosters the development of an open, globalised economy whereas the law is perceived, because of the limits it imposes on everyone, as a regulating, and even protective, element.

3Is the search for bioethical ‘governance’, however, the response to the management of a reality, the positive aspects of which we would like to safeguard for our health and our development, while protecting ourselves from the abuses?

4It is indispensable because ensuring the health safety of biological products or preserving the environment is vital and also because promoting the objective of access to health care for all supposes, as the saying goes, getting (from the healthcare system) the greatest good for the greatest number.

5It is, however, insufficient if this balance between economic dynamics and needs in healthcare and knowledge is not included in a collective project which commits us in the long term and is inspired by values and history.

6Understood in this way, bioethics takes on a political value: it makes us think about what is necessary to maintain the social contract, a key element in the ‘identity’ of peoples.

7But this political dimension only has a future if bioethics recognises that it exercises its influence, not by withdrawing, but by relating to a world open to the winds of change.